ISLAMABAD: A senior United Nations official on Wednesday expressed concern over the allegations of police harassment by a group of Baloch protesters, as a provincial minister in Balochistan’s caretaker setup said the people leading the demonstration only wanted to move abroad to seek asylum.
More than 200 Baloch nationals, including women and children, have been rallying in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, against what they call “enforced disappearances” and “genocide” of members of their ethnic community.
Many of them walked up to 1,600 kilometers to camp outside the National Press Club under the banner of Baloch Yakjehti – or Solidarity – Committee after a 24-year-old resident of Turbat district, Balach Baloch, was killed in the custody of provincial Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) that accused him of involvement in militant attacks.
Baloch’s family and civil society activists deny the CTD claim, saying that he ran a shop to earn a living and describing his death as a case of extrajudicial murder.
“Today I met WHRDs [World Human Rights Defenders] @SammiBaluch [Sammi Deen Baloch] & @MahrangBaloch_ [Mahrang Baloch] to discuss the ongoing protests against enforced disappearances in Balochistan, #Pakistan,” UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Mary Lawlor said in social media post. “The reports of police harassment are [very] concerning. Spurious criminal complaints against peaceful protesters should be dropped @PakUN_Geneva [Pakistan’s UN Mission in Geneva].”
The two people mentioned in the post organized the Islamabad protest.
Dr. Mahrang Baloch said she informed the UN official about the “police crackdown on peaceful protesters, the malicious media campaign, and absurd comments by the caretaker Prime Minister of Pakistan regarding Baloch missing persons.”
She added the UN official assured the protesters she would continue to monitor the situation along with any threats faced by the group.
Meanwhile, Balochistan’s Caretaker Information Minister Jan Achakzai held a news conference in Quetta, accusing the protesters of indulging in a propaganda campaign agains the country.
“People understand Dr. Mahrang Baloch’s motivation [behind organizing the demonstration],” he said. “She is looking for an asylum to settle in some foreign country.”
He quoted official statistics and said there were only 820 missing people in the province unlike the developed world where the number ran into tens of thousands.
The provincial minister also maintained that banned militant groups asked people to register their foot soldiers as missing people who then lose their lives while combating the security forces or taking their own lives as suicide bombers.
