Balochistan Point Voice of Nation
Voice for Baloch Missing Persons(VBMP) rallied against enforced disappearances’ and safe release of disappeared Baloch on Eid day in Quetta. The relatives of missing persons in a large number with political activists, students and members of Voice for Baloch Missing Persons joined the rally. The protesters including women, children and old aged parents of missing persons chanted slogans against enforced disappearances’ of their loved ones. They marched through different roads of the city and later staged a demonstration outside the Quetta Press Club.
According to Mama Qadeer Baloch, vice president of Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) the motive of the rally was to gain attention of the world community towards tragic deteriorating state affairs in the Balochistan. It is worth mentioning that families of abducted Baloch have been protesting on Eid days every year for past five years to express their concerns over abduction and custodial killings allegedly by state security forces and intelligence agencies. To register their protest on this religious festival against disappearance of Baloch from different walks of life they celebrate Eid by carrying out rallies and sitting at strike camp with anguish for last five years while millions of Muslims celebrate Eid in other parts of the world.
Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), an human rights organization that is struggling for the safe release of Baloch missing persons, numbers missing persons more than 15,000, while more than 1600 decomposed and bullet-riddled dead bodies of them have been recovered in different areas of Balochistn. However, the recovered number of bodies from Tutak mass graves is aside from the above mentioned figure. VBMP is of the view of having complete data of missing person.
Previously, VBMP leadership provided the data of missing persons to UN working group that visited Quetta in 2012. The same organization also held historic long march from Quetta to Islamabad to highlight the predicament of this humanitarian crisis, even the five years long protest camp of VBMP for missing Baloch could not make state to soften their policies regarding issue of abducted Baloch. They have been appealing the United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International and other humanitarian organizations for taking notice of enforced disappearances and abduct, kill and dump to play their part in recovery of thousands of missing Baloch. However, the international human rights organization have not played any satisfactory role.
Though, the abduct, kill and dump policy was launched in dictator General Pervez Musharraf’s military regime in Balochistan, however, it is still continued unabated despite claims of democracy in Pakistan. The provincial government of Dr Malik Baloch seems stranded pertaining the issue of recovery of dead bodies and abductions. Dr Malik and its ruling party have not been able to change the mindset of state policymakers regarding the Baloch genocide, yet Dr Malik claims to have got stopped the extrajudicial murder of Baloch political activist and other from various fields of life.
The abduction of Baloch, recovery of their decomposed dead bodies and mass graves in Khuzdar must have been great concerns and menaces to civil society, national and international human rights organizations, United Nations and Islamabad; regrettably, these human rights violations have never been taken seriously. It is high time the responsible authorities, Islamabad, champions of human rights defense to take serious measures for the safe release of Baloch political activists, teachers, and doctors and lawyers so that ways may be made for talks with Baloch nationalist.
Editor-in-Chief
The Balochistan Point
Published in The Balochistan Point on July 30, 2014
