Balochistan: A Review Of Missing Persons

By Aaliyah Shah

It is an open secret that thousands of Baloch people are missing for an extended time, and the number of disappeared persons in Balochistan continues to increase. The loved ones of the ‘missing persons’ plea and cry for justice but their voices are seemingly falling into deaf ears. BUT WHY?

Among thousands of disappeared persons, we are almost only highlighting the cases of some whom we know personally or they are related to us. Another fact, however, is that enforced disappearance in Balochistan started right after Balochistan’s forcible merger to Pakistan.

Some of the early recorded cases of disappearance include that of Dilip Das and Sher Ali Marri who were picked up by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies in 1971. Similarly, in 1976, Ahmed Shah Kurd Baloch and the son of Athaullah Mengal Asad Baloch were abducted by the Pakistani military. They are missing. Thousands of Marri Baloch were arrested and disappeared during Bhutto’s regime in Balochistan and were never seen again.

While the others remain ‘missing’ to this day, the torture and murder of Asadullah Mengal have been confirmed by, a former chief of Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul during a television talk show that he was killed in an interrogation centre during Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s era.

These cases might not be the first cases of disappearance in Balochistan but these are the first ones that have been highlighted and put on record in the public domain. The Baloch nation still not aware of the fate of thousands of other ‘missing persons’ who were abducted in the 70s and the following decades of Baloch resistance for freedom. Even the disappeared persons of the current times starting from Musharraf’s era has surpassed 20,000 Baloch including some of the brightest minds of Balochistan.

These human rights violations right under the nose of the UN and the rest of the world shows Pakistan’s has been given the license trample international conventions and principles and the UN continues to ignore these crimes – in fact, war crime – as it did in the case of Bangladesh.

Everyone among us [Baloch] must understand that Pakistan’s atrocities and barbarism against Baloch are indiscriminate. It doesn’t differentiate whether the victim is the son of ‘a Sardar’ Attaullah Mengal or he is Dilip Das and Sher Ali Marri from the hill of Kohistan Marri region of Balochistan.  It is well possible that common people among us are not aware of the past crimes of Pakistan or they might forget if we do not continuously highlight such brutalities of the state and link them to the current struggle.

We [Baloch] at home and abroad need to have a collective approach to highlight the systematic and ongoing crimes of Pakistan against our people. We should not let the families of the abducted Baloch carry the burden of the disappearance of their loved ones alone. The approach of highlighting only a few cases whom we know personally or who have somehow related us on a personal level of the organisational level does no justice to the rest of the disappeared persons who might even have nobody to speak for them.

Where is our collective approach on social media or anywhere else why?

I can say surely that along with Ahmad Shah Kurd and Asad Baloch, there were more Baloch who were enforced disappeared during the same time. We must take a look back at those who are missing from the beginning. The new increased disappearances and abducted by Pakistan’s forces in Balochistan could be a plan to hide its past crimes and wash its previous sins.

They [enemies] are consciously trying to divert our minds to let us forget the past missing persons and their past crimes but we must continue to highlight the previous cases along with the current ones. We must show the world that the creation of this unnatural state was a mistake and it has a criminal record from its formation. This mistake needs to be undone and the Baloch nation must be free from its yoke.