Dimensions of Forced Disappearances
Samuel Baid
Army’s agents, who enforced disappear people in Baluchistan, seem to have enfranchised local goons to commit crimes like kidnapping a seven-year old girl for forced marriage, throw young people into wells, run private jails for women, children and men and last but not the least, forced disappear poor people’s camels and donkeys. These crimes have not dented the figures of enforced disappearances committed by the Army and its agents.
In March, the Baluchistan Post reported a horrendous story of seven-year old girl of Naseerabad. The accused, who had the police support, broke into her house and took away her father to force him to agree to his little daughter Shahr Bano’s marriage. The police are not acting against the goons because of their connection, her mother and brother told newsmen. What connections? Is it a reference to those who are responsible for forced disappearances of people in Baluchistan?
There are reports of Baluchistan Provincial Ministers running private jails. In Barkhan district Provincial Minister Sardar Abdul Rahman Khetran is reported to be running a private jail. It came to light in February, when bodies of a woman and two young men were found in a well in Barkhan area. It was presumed that the woman was the mother of the two boys. The woman’s husband had complained that his wife and seven children had been incarcerated in the jail of Communication Minister Sardar Abdul Rahman Khetran.
In the Harnai District of Baluchistan another Provincial Minister Noor Muhammad ran private jail. It came to light when an angry 12-year old boy left his house and remained untraced for one-and-a-half months. His brother approached the police which traced the boy from a Provincial Minister’s jail.
The existence of private jails are possibly the places where disappeared people are taken to be tortured – sometimes to death. If a prisoner dies, there is no respect for the dead – he or she may be thrown into a well, or into a running river from a bridge.
The private jail owners may very likely be enjoying patronage of the Army. Goonda elements in Baluchistan may also be the Army protégé. That is why the crime of forced disappearances had increased and become multi-dimensional. Poor people cannot expect any help from the Provincial government whose Ministers themselves run private jails perhaps to co-ordinate the Army’s crime of forced disappearances.
The Province has an elected government that does not solve the people’s problems. The people’s complaints to the police do not help. So is the case with levies.
Baluchistan is Pakistan’s most backward and deprived province in terms of health, education and human rights. Turbat is Baluchistan’s second largest city after Quetta. Here health facilities are miserable. Malaria and typhoid are endemic here because of the non-availability of clean drinking water and existence of pools of stagnant water of last rain or flood. Malaria and typhoid patients have to be taken to Karachi. In Turbat there is dire shortage of doctors. A woman, under treatment in the District Teaching Hospital, died in April because there was no doctor.
Education receives low priority in the province. It may please the Army which especially picks up young educated people for disappearance and even for elimination. Education is anathema to all who want to exploit Baluchistan. The Baluchistan Post writes that out of total population of 2.7 million children as many as 1.8 lakh children don’t go to school. Condition of schools is very bad. Hundreds of teachers come to school on the first of every month just to collect their salaries. This means there is no teaching in schools. In Gwadar, reports of forced disappearances are not so frequent as in the rest of Baluchistan, but here the people are learning that after the Chinese advent in Gwadar, they have no right to their land and their source of earning.
Head of “Haq Do Tehreek” (the movement for rights) in Gwadar Maulana Hidayat Rehman Baloch told newsmen that in Gwadar, trawlers, mafia, drug mafia, extortionist mafia and thieves and dacoits were free to loot.
What the Maulana said is the reason why more and more people want liberation from Pakistan. On March 27, Baluchistan National Movement (BNM) organised a rally in Netherlands to protest what they called “forced occupation of Baluchistan”. They said they wanted to tell the world that “Pakistan is a cruel and oppressive state violating the international political and humanitarian laws. Pakistan has occupied an independent country and Baluch are fighting the enemy country, Pakistan, on every front against this occupation,” according to the Baluchistan Post.
Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinion of the author.