Sardar Attaullah Mengal said that the responsible should be punished so that the people saw them as punished, adding that instead of punishing them the government is showering flowers on them and telling the bereaved people to surrender.
Kidnappings and Killings of Balochs
According to the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC), during the first four months of 2011, as many 25 journalists, writers, human rights defenders, students, and political activists have been killed extra-judicially. 24 of the victims were arrested or abducted, disappeared and then killed. For example, prominent human rights defender and journalist, Mr. Siddique Eido and his friend, Mr. Yousaf Nazar Baloch, were allegedly arrested by the Frontier Corp and police on December 21, 2010. Their mutilated bodies were found on April 28, 2011 having been dumped next to the Makran coastal highway near Ormara, Balochistan province. The other victim, human rights defender Mr. Naeem Sabir Baloch, the district coordinator of Human Right Commission of Pakistan, was killed outside his house by unknown persons. He was working to compile a list of victims of forced disappearance, intended for the Supreme Court of Pakistan and High Court of Balochistan.
The ALRC called on the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings should seek an opportunity to visit the region and to inquire into the matter. Local and international human rights organizations should demand immediate action from the government and the international community to deal with this extraordinary situation.
In a comment on kidnappings and killings in Balochistan, Daily Times wrote on November 7, 2011: The entire nation should be ashamed of the brutalities unleashed by the military against its own people in Balochistan. Javed Naseer Rind, a young journalist, was abducted in September and his tortured, bullet-riddled body was found the other day in the province. More than a dozen Baloch, including women, were killed last week in less than 24 hours during a military campaign in Balochistan.
US gives asylum to Baloch
journalist
Tellingly, Siraj Ahmed Malik, a journalist from Balochistan was given political asylum by US in October 2011 on the plea that his life was threatened in Pakistan in view of abductions and killings in Baluchistan.
On August 19, Malik, who is on a fellowship at the University of Arizona, applied for political asylum in the United States. In his petition, he said that his work as a journalist and ethnic activist in Balochistan, where he had exposed military abuses, made him likely to be arrested, tortured, abducted and "ultimately killed by the government" if he returned.
"The threat of disappearance was always lurking in the back of our minds," Malik wrote in his asylum petition. "My friends, colleagues and I lived with the knowledge that yesterday it was him that disappeared; today it is someone else; tomorrow it could easily be me." According to his asylum file, agents accosted him in airports and hotels, detained and questioned him, and repeatedly threatened to "teach me a lesson."
Reporting about Malik's political asylum, Pamela Constable of Washington Post wrote: "Activists including Malik assert that more than 5,000 Baloch have vanished in the past decade, but the issue has never been seriously addressed, while the government has both co-opted and persecuted Baloch tribal chiefs. In 2007, Pakistan's military president fired the head of the Supreme Court, who sought to probe the disappearances. In 2008, a civilian government took office and an investigative commission was established, but little action has been taken."
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