Memorandum demanded UN to investigate missing persons issue

KARACHI: The government of Pakistan has ignored the historical long march of Balochistan by Voice of Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP} and families of missing persons for the recovery of disappeared persons of Balochistan.

According to media reports the four page memorandum demanded the UN to investigate issues of missing persons; target killings; enforced disappearances; alleged involvement of agencies in heinous crimes; and a UN fact-finding mission to investigate mass graves and international standard DNA tests to identify bodies.

Voice for the missing Baloch being heard in Multan

MULTAN: The Baloch activists, led by Voice for Baloch Missing Persons Chairperson Mama Qadeer Baloch, arrived in Multan on Wednesday on the 76th day of their long march to Islamabad highlighting the issue of Baloch missing people.

Several Seraiki nationalist parties, commoners and Baloch students of educational institutions welcomed the group showering rose petals on the participants.

Unheeded cry for help: March for the ‘missing’

DAWN.COM Editorial

IT constitutes a picture that any society would find unbearably moving — if that society still had it in itself to care: a group of some two dozen people, mainly women and children, resolutely traversing on foot the long and arduous terrain from Quetta to Karachi. Led by Mama Qadeer Baloch, they clutch pictures of loved ones who have ‘gone missing’, a euphemism for men thought to have been illegally apprehended and detained by the shadowy intelligence and security apparatus. The march has been undertaken by the advocacy group Voice for Baloch Missing Persons. Why? Because despite the ‘missing persons’ having been an issue for several years now, despite sporadic initiatives by various parties and the mouthing of good intentions, despite the Supreme Court’s instructions, there has been no meaningful progress. Mutilated bodies of men continue to be found dumped across the province, and even in Karachi; calls for the security establishment to disclose the facts go ignored — as does the plight of the families of the missing by both state and citizenry that seem to have washed their hands of Balochistan and its many legitimate grievances.

Kin of Baloch missing persons march on

Photo: @Faiz_Baloch

by Saher Baloch

THAL, Nov 17: In scorching noon heat, around 25 people quietly walk on the RCD Highway, before stopping for a break at an open air cafe.

The families of the missing, who started their journey on foot on Oct 27, reached Utthal on Saturday, led by Mama Qadeer Baloch, vice-president of an advocacy group named Voice of Missing Baloch Persons (VoMBP). The families continued their journey on Sunday morning, as more people joined them on their way.

He sent home his shirt buttons to tell us he was alive

Hina Baloch

Her face covered with a shawl, feet swollen, eyes dried, holding a picture of her brother tightly in her hands, Farzana Majeed is slowly and painfully covering the 450 mile distance from Quetta to Karachi on foot for the past nine days. In reality, this painful journey for Farzana began four years ago, when her family received a call at their home informing that her brother had been “picked up” on his way from Mastung. Having attended funerals of hundreds of tortured and mutilated young men, who had been disappeared under similar circumstances and later dumped in various corners of Balochistan, Farzana knew very well that her brother may meet the same fate.

Follow the #VBMPLongMarch on twitter

COMMENT: Awaran — Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

The government and its ministers along with the army are quick to blame the Baloch for putting up hurdles in relief work and the social media and the mainstream media join the chorus

Awaran, a place that already was suffering from shocks of long-drawn army and Frontier Corps operations in their effort to contain the brave and unflinching resistance that Dr Allah Nazar and the people there are putting up against their attempts to make people meekly submit to exploitation, was hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on September 24. The UN humanitarian envoy, Dr Abdullah Al-Matouq, said the UN was ready to help with relief work in Balochistan’s earthquake-affected areas but the Pakistani authorities have refused. This isn’t the first time that the disaster-stricken Baloch have been left at the mercy of the vagaries of nature and elements on a flimsy security concerns excuse for which the establishment itself is to blame. When Balochistan was battered by Cyclone Yemyin in June 2007 causing flooding affecting 1.5 million people, the international relief organisations were suddenly stopped on the security concerns excuse. Even the relief operations of the Baloch Students Organisation (BSO) and other nationalist organisations were stopped and camps disbanded. The same is true today; early Thursday morning some Baloch students of Dera Ghazi Khan (DGK) put up a camp at the Traffic Chowk near the DGK Press Club to collect supplies for the Awaran quake victims but were soon rudely stopped by intelligence agencies personnel. Independent news reports confirm that the relief supplies being sent by individuals and NGOs are stopped by the FC, which says only it will distribute them. The National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) and Provincial Disaster Management Agency handouts claiming relief are bogus as reports prove no supplies had reached either Gajjar or Malaar till Friday.

Also read:
COMMENT: Awaran II — Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

Earthquake tragedy: BLF chief says international, private help welcome

Dr. Nazar said that the workers of private NGOs or international bodies, us as the UN, would be welcomed by the Baloch Freedom Fighters

KARACHI: An impasse looms large over the relief effort in Balochistan’s earthquake-devastated region – an area known to be a hotbed of Baloch Freedom Fighters – which has already resulted in mushrooming clashes in the region. However, a top commander has offered a way forward through the mistrust between rebels and security forces: Let the relief effort be handled by private or international organisations.

'Dr. Allah Nazar today is the singularly most effective and legendary resistance leader on the ground, leading BLF'

— TheBaloch (@BalaachMarri) September 29, 2013

JSQM held a demonstration against enforced disappearances

File Photo

[DOKRI] Activists of the Jeay Sindh Qoumi Mahaz (JSQM) held a demonstration outside the press club in protest against alleged enforced disappearances of Shahid Junejo, Asghar Jamali, Zameer Khaskheli and others. JSQM leaders Siraj, Zaheer, Ruk Sindhi and Ahmed Ali Noonari demanded immediate release of missing activists.

Mehran Baluch speaks at United Nations HR council

Geneva:  Mehran Baluch, Baloch Representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council, speaks at UN’s 22nd Session of HRC on 10 March 2013. Item 4 (General Debate) Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention.

Chinese delegation asks point of order and tries to justify China-Pakistan exploitation of Balochistan specially Gwardar Port

UN should physically intervene in Balochistan instead of only showing concern: Hyrbyair Marri

London: United Nation should not only be content with its concern about Balochistan but it should physically intervene against the on-going human rights violations like it did in Bosnia Herzegovina and Libya to play its role as a vanguard for Human Rights because further delay in UN and other democratic country’s intervention will deteriorate Balochistan’s already extreme human rights violations. Baloch patriot leader Hyrbybair Marri expressed these view in a statement released to Balochistan national newspapers in relation to the press conference of UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay in Islamabad.

It pertinent to mention that the UN human rights Chief Navi Pillay had express her concern about the grave human rights violations in Balochistan at the end of a four-day visit to Pakistan and regretted not visiting Sindh and Balochistan. She said “disappearances in Baluchistan had become “a focus for national debate, international attention and local despair.”