Fallen Defenders of Balochistan

Siddique Eido and Yousaf Nazar

28 April 2011

Thousands of defenders of Baloch nation have perished in Pakistan’s dirty war in Balochistan. Thousands killed and their body dumped, thousands more still suffer in torture cells of Pakistan. Villages bombed and burned their inhabitant forced into becoming internal displaced person (IDP), cities turned into fortress with many check posts surrounding them all this to isolate the Baloch freedom fighters in the mountains.

Activists living in cities of Balochistan are most vulnerable, after the Murgaap incident, in April of 2009, when Pakistani intelligence agency picked up three prominent Baloch leaders Ghulam Mohammed Baloch, Lala Muneer and Sher Mohammed Baloch from their lawyers chamber in Turbat and within days killed them in custody and dumped their bodies in Murgaap it became clear that Baloch activists are not even save within the boundaries of a Pakistani court.

Enforced Disappearances and Balochistan

Importantly those responsible for the disappearances are named and punished the scourge of enforced disappearances will continue unabated

Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

The scourge of enforced disappearances in Pakistan has severely eroded the foundations of society’s conscience and confidence. This crime against humanity has been going on for so long and so systematically in Balochistan that it has come to be considered a normal state of affairs. But a vast majority remain unperturbed by the atrocity inflicted on the victims and all those connected to them.

Bertolt Bretcht in his 1935 poem “When evil-doing comes like falling rain” has put this attitude very poignantly: “The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, no body calls out “stop!” When crimes begin to pile up, they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.”

Baloch Journalist Sajid Hussain