Balochistan, Asia’s blackest hole

Members of a displaced Baloch family from Pakistan currently living in Kandahar, Afghanistan. by Karlos Zurutuza

Every 27 March is a day of mourning for the Baloch. Karlos Zurutuza reports from an area which is largely overlooked by the international media.

It was hanging on the wall of one of the many hairdressers in West London

On a yellowed piece of paper in a frame, The New York Times reported that Kalat – the old kingdom which corresponds roughly to Pakistan’s Balochistan modern province – was an ‘independent sovereign state’ as of 12 August 1947.

‘We had a state of our own for eight months until Pakistan annexed our territory by force eight months later, on 27 March 1948,’ the barber said while he finished the job with his razor. I could not help thinking of the late Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, producing the Palestinian pound note that he would always carry with him as a proof of the previous political existence of the country under British rule.

“Seven Long Years Have Passed and No Hope of Recovery of My Brother” – Sister of Kabeer Baloch

BALOCHISTAN: Victim of enforced disappearance, Kabeer Baloch’s sister in a statement issued to the media said, “It will be seven long years on March 27, 2016 to the enforced disappearance of my brother; Kabeer Baloch, and his friends, Mushtaq Baloch and Attaullah Baloch without any information about their whereabouts or confirmation whether they were alive.” Such are the existing conditions of the tragically forgotten Baloch people disappeared by the Pakistani security forces in Balochistan.

At present, there are more than 24 thousand Baloch missing persons including women and children. The range of the ages of the enforced disappeared by the Pakistani forces varies from 80-year-old to 9-year-old grade five students. The openly confessed failure of the government authorities regarding the recovery of the enforced disappeared civilians in Balochistan has created a human tragedy much ignored by the United Nations and the human rights groups who are criminally silent on the issue.