Balochistan: A Pakistani court sentenced three Baloch IDPs to death by hanging

BAHAWALPUR: An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) on Friday sentenced three Baloch Internally Displaced Persons to death alleging that the men were involved in blowing up gas pipelines and belonged to a banned Baloch militant organisation.

The death sentence was handed under Sections 302/34 of the Pakistan Penal Code, 3/4 of the Explosives Act and 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Pakistan media reported that four people were killed in the alleged gas pipeline blast near Abadpur in Rahim Yar Khan Punjab in 2014.

The victims, of what Baloch social media activists term as ‘Pakistan’s judicial murder’, have been named as Pahrdin s/o Azim Bugti, Ramzan s/o Juma Bugti and Mewa s/o Thagya Bugti. The allegation against them is that they bombed the main gas pipeline coming from Sui Balochistan and running along the railway track in Abadpur in Rahim Yar Khan Punjab.

Baloch social media activists on Saturday took to Twitter to expose the collusion between the Pakistani military and the judicial system.

The pro-freedom Baloch leader and president of the Baloch Republican Party, Brahumdagh Bugti tweeted: “Pakistan’s flawed Anti-Terrorism Court has sentenced three innocent Bugti IDPs Pahrdin s/o Azim Bugti, Ramzan s/o Juma Bugti and Mewa s/o Thagya Bugti to death by hanging on Monday. We call on #UPR28 to save these innocent lives. #Balochistan”

The Baloch side of the story is that the four men were expelled from their native Dera Bugti home in 2005 when the then military dictator General Musharraf ordered bombardment of many villages in Kohistan Marri and Dera Bugti regions in Balochistan.

After these orders and ongoing heavy military attacks on Baloch villages and towns at least 250,000 people from district Kohlu and Dera Bugti had fled to Punjab and Sindh in search of safe refuge and become known as Internally Displaced People (IDPs).

But, the government of Pakistan and military blocked the access of international aid agencies including to the United Nation, Red Cross and Doctors without Borders to help the IDPs due to which hundreds of people mostly children and elderly died of several diseases.

On top of the natural disasters, the Punjabi security forces, army and intelligence agencies continued to haunt the Baloch IDPs. Their make shifts were attacked on several occasions and several people were arrests.

The victims of recent ‘judicial execution’ were also among the IDPs who fell prey to Pakistani army and intelligence agencies in 2014. They were kept in undisclosed military detentions centres and tortured to coerce them into false confessions.

On Friday, the Pakistan media published the news of their execution order by an ‘Anti-Terrorist Court’ in Pakistan’s Punjab province.