Ahmar Mustikhan
, Baltimore Foreign Policy Examiner
Balochistan representative at the U.N. Human Rights Council has urged the U.S. media and human rights advocates to make Balochistan the focus of their work to stop the enforced disappearances and extra jduicial killings there.
Mehran Baluch said this in an address to a conference on the International Day of the Disappeared organized by the American Friends of Balochistan at the National Press Club in Washington DC on Tuesday.
Dr. Nazir S. Bhatti, president of the Pakistan Christian Congress, presided over the conference.
Bhatti said Christians commiserate with the Baloch sufferings as they too have remained at the receiving end of Pakistan state and society.
Mehran Baluch said he noticed some positive developments in the U.S. over Balochistan in recent weeks. "I thank Carlotta Gall of the New York Times for her brilliant report about Brahumdagh Bugti who is like a brother to me," he said.
Gall was attacked by Pakistani secret services some years back when was on a reporting assignment tin Quetta, capital of Balochistan.
Early August, Mehran Baluch had welcomed the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report entitled“We can torture, kill and keep you for years”, a three-part series of investigations on Balochistan.
"The HRW report correctly points out that many of the victims of enforced disappearances are tortured and executed with impunity," he said.
He also commended Mr. Sam Zarifi and Ms. Maya Pastakia of the Amnesty International, London, for their two reports on the kill-and-dump policy in Balochistan.
"I note with sadness Islamabad has rejected the findings of the HRW and Amnesty International reports without caring to look into them,” he said, adding “Pakistan army generals, who call the shots in the country, are today are in the same state of denial in Balochistan like the genocide of three million Bengalis during the 1971 Bangladesh war of liberation."
He noted the horrific scale of extra judicial killings that is happening in Balochistan today is unprecedented in history.
Other speakers who spoke in defense of human rights in Balochistan were Clothilde Le Coz, Washington DC Director of the Reporters Without Borders; Jay Kansara, associate director of the Hindu American Foundation; Ashraf Ramelah, president of the Voice of Copts; Jeffrey Imm, founder of Responsible for Equality and Liberty (R.E.A.L.), and Andrew Eiva, president of the Freedom for Sudan Committee.
Mehran Baluch commended the A.F.B. for remaining steadfast on the Balochistan liberation ideology.
http://www.examiner.com/foreign-policy-in-baltimore/new-york-times
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