Ahmar Mustikhan
U.S. supplied fighter jets and gunship helicopters have killed at least 11 Baluch tribesmen, including women and children, in the restive southwestern province of Baluchistan, which the Baluch natives call occupied territories.
Sher Mohammed Bugti, spokesperson for the pro-independence Baloch Republican Party appealed to the United Nations and other international human rights organizations to take note of the genocide and appaling human rights violations in Baluchistan, according to a report in the Quetta-based Tawar daily newspaper.
The latest Pakistani attack came on the eve of US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Michael G. Mullen's talk "Afghanistan and Pakistan -- America's Challenge: Solving the Impossible" at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington DC, amid growing concerns at the Pentagon over the end use of U.S. supplied weaponry.
The BRP spokesman said in the backdrop of the aerial bombings, Islamabad's talk about stopping of the military operation and the so-called package for Baluchistan was nothing but a charade.
"To the contrary, it is a fact that the rulers are even today engaged in ethnic genocide in Baluchistan and ruthlessly killing Baluch people," Bugti was cited as telling the Online News from an undisclosed location on satellite phone.
He said in the latest attacks over the last four days in Sui, Dera Bugti, Soori, Zamurdan and Khajoori areas innocent and unarmed people have fallen victim to the barbarism of the Pakistan's state.
"The only fault of these people is they are Baluch," Bugti, who is a confidante of Baluch national hero Nawab Brahamdagh Bugti said.
He said the Pakistani forces killed four people, three of them women, in an area called Neelagh. Faisal Bugti, spokesperson for the BRP in Dera Bugti identified the dead women as Soomri, Jamul and Bakhsha, adding the three victims were in a caravan migrating to safer area.
Sher Mohammed Bugti said even those civilians who were fleeing to safety after getting tired of the daily state terrorism on their villages were targeted on the border with Punjab by the Pakistani occupation forces.
He said these tribesmen were migrating to a safe area to raise their families in peace but came under attack of the Pakistani occupation forces that left seven of them killed.
He said in several villages in the Pat Feeder area, adjoing Kandhkot in Sindh, Pakistani forces have left all hell lose, destroying the huts and mud homes of field hands and set on fire their standing crops. He said fighter jets and gunship helicopters were used in the military raid, adding the bombings on the civilians were going on. Until the last reports he received at least 15 civilians, including women and children , were wounded..
Five brigades of the Pakistan military are engaged in the military operations in the Dera Bugti area alone, Baluch resistance sources said. Overall, more than 150,000 Pakistani soliders are conducting a scorched earth policy in Baluchistan with the help of mostly U.S.-supplied jets and helicopters, primarily meant for use against the Taliban.
Bugti said scores of local people were picked up by the Pakistani forces and shifted to an undisclosed location.
"Water supply to the the agricultural lands of Baluch cultivators from Pat Feeder Canal has been stopped," he charged. He said the irony is that the locals are being forced to flee their hearth and home and when they try to migrate, they fall victim to state aggression on their way to safety.
"Even the injured are not spared, and in stead of getting medical aid they are tortured badly," Bugti said.
He termed the drum beating about Islamabad's package for Baluchistan "as a gift of bodies, trampling of human rights and attacks on their honor and very survival."
He deplored that international human rights organizations have turned a blin eye to Islamabad's state terrorism against the hapless Baluch people. "This is inexcusable and must be condemned," Bugti said.
He said the Pakistani state's armed forces are sadly mistaken to think they would succeed in subduing the Baluch will for independence through brutalities and barbarism. He said state atrocities were further steeling the peoples resolve to follow in the footsteps of the martyrs and torch bearers.
Many top notch Baluch leaders including former governor and chief minister of Baluchistan, Nawab Akbar Bugti, and former provinical assembly member Nawabzada Bala'ach Marri, Dr. Khalid Shaheed were killed fighting against the military occupation of their homeland.
Bugti appealed to the U.N,. Amnesty International, Human Righst Watch and other organizations to play their role in ending the daily human rights violations and state terrorism in Baluchistan of Pakistan army, Frontier Constabulary, Military Intelligence and Inter Services Intelligence.
He accused the Pakistani authorities of violating the basic human rights of the Baluch people for more than 62 years now -- Baluchistan was annexed by Pakistan at gunpoint against the wishes of the Baluch people on March 27, 1948. The bicameral Baluch parliament at the time, Diwan-i-Aaam and Diwan-i-Khas had both unanimously opted for independence and rejected the idea of merger with Pakistan.
Bugti said thousands of Baluch patriots and activists have been extra judicially abducted, made to disappear and subjected to worst forms of torture in Occupied Baluchistan.
He said illegal arrests and abductions have become the order of the day.
Bugti said the announcement that Pakistan would not construct new military cantonments was deceitful. "Every nook and corner in Baluchistan has virtually beeen converted into a cantonment for the Baluch," he said. "Pakistani state has left no stone unturned to render the survival of Baluch people impossible."
But the silver lining in the sky is that Baluch resistance forces have come very close to one another to confront the Pakistan army. In a recent talk with this correspondent, Bugti described Baluch national hero Hyrbyair Marri as "an elder brother."
The Obama administration appears to have become blackmailed by Pakistan because of its nuclear power status. Both the political and military leadership are in a limbo how to deal with the what they call the AfPak crisis. U.S. analysts are extremely concerned Taliban are killing American soldiers, mostly youngsters from modest backgrounds who join the military for a college degree, in Afghanistan with the tacit support of Pakistan -- not that of Allah.
No comments:
Post a Comment