Saravan Incident and Pakistani media

 Humgaam Investigative  Report

Recently, there have been significant discussions in the Pakistani media regarding the incident of the killing of 9 Pakistani citizens in Iranian occupied  Balochistan’s Saravan region.

The Pakistani media claimed that three armed individuals entered a garage at 2 AM and ruthlessly killed nine ‘Punjabi labourers.’ Pakistani media implicated that the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) was behind it, accusing it of mercilessly killing labourers working in Iran.

No Baloch group accepted responsibility for this incident yet.

The Iranian government has assured Pakistan that all aspects of the incident will be brought to light, and evidence is being gathered in this regard.

In this incident, nine individuals, namely Malik Azhar, Muhammad Shoaib, Muhammad Asif, Muhammad Akmal, Muhammad Abu Bakr, Shahryar, Muhammad Bashir, Muhammad Zubair, and Muhammad Shahzad, lost their lives.

Meanwhile, Muhammad Asghar, Ashfaq, and Usman sustained injuries with gunshot wounds to their chest, face, back, and abdomen. They are currently under treatment at Razi Hospital in Saravan where one individual’s condition is reported to be critical. All of them are Punjabi nationals and residents of Pakistan’s Punjab province.

The incident occurred on January 27 in Bam Posht village, a predominantly Baloch area in Sirkan in the Saravan district of Iranian Occupied Balochistan. The area is sparsely populated, and its residents face extreme poverty.

Humgaam News conducted an independent investigation to uncover the original motives behind the incident. According to the Humgaam report, the deceased and the injured had connections with the Pakistani army, not only being regular ISI and MI agents but also operatives of a state-sponsored death squad involved in Baloch ethnic cleansing. Additionally, local sources say that some of these individuals attempted to bribe the local population to get their support in collaborating with them to pinpoint the locations of Baloch pro-freedom activists but their attempts failed.

Military experts understand that such agents and operatives do not keep any official documentation from their respective agencies and they operate undercover. Local sources further revealed that the victims were not ordinary labourers but a group of spying operatives affiliated with the Pakistani military, conducting espionage and actively participating in hunting down Baloch political activists. Some locals also claimed that these individuals were attempting to create negative sentiments against Baloch freedom fighters.

It is noteworthy that there are several incidents where many individuals, were gunned down by unknown armed assailants, who relocated in the western part of Balochistan after fleeing Eastern occupied Balochistan where were likely being targeted, abducted, and killed through enforced disappearances, coercion, and economic hardships because of Pakistani state atrocities and crimes against them.

It is alleged that in the past, many Baloch were killed in Iranian-occupied Balochistan who were political activists., It is widely believed that this group of so-called Pakistani labourers were behind the killing of Baloch activists despite Pakistani media portraying them as common labourers, it is believed that they were part of the Pakistani state Death Squad group operating in the region.

The bodies of the deceased individuals in Iranian occupied Balochistan were not handed over to Pakistan, leading to strong criticism from influential circles. Protests against the government’s ineffective measures for the return of the bodies took place in Punjab.

This narrative is not presented in the Pakistani media, which consistently portrays these individuals as labourers. The mainstream media maintains control, allowing it to successfully sell its false narrative while evading counterarguments.

In Balochistan under Pakistani control, videos, identity cards, and pictures of individuals killed in armed operations by Baloch armed groups are shared on social media, portraying them as labourers and shopkeepers.

However, thorough investigations showed that most of such people were collaborators of the state employed as civilians to spy not only on Baloch sarmachars but also to identify members of the Baloch community sympathetic to the Baloch freedom struggle and politically aware and learned youth.   

Baloch armed groups in Pakistani-controlled Balochistan are regularly accused by Pakistan’s mainstream media of killing non-local individuals in attacks. This strategy helps the military establishment present these incidents as acts of terrorism against innocent people, diverting attention from their actual operations and motives.

The situation in Balochistan, both in the Iranian and Pakistani occupied regions, remains complex, with accusations and counter-accusations being exchanged between the various stakeholders involved.

In most cases, the Baloch Sarmachar owned their comrades who were killed on the battlefield or arrested and killed in custody but the Pakistani army, ISI and Military Intelligence have a conning habit of concealing their actions so that they can malign the Baloch struggle at national and international level by accusing Baloch fighters of killing commoners.

Sadly, the International Media seem to fall into the trap of the Pakistan military as most of the time they only report one side of the story i.e. the state narrative and overlook the other side of the story which is the narrative of the Baloch freedom struggle.

This report was originally published in Humgaam Urdu, an online news portal reporting about the Balochistan issue.