Ziarat Massacre continuation of Baloch Genocide, world must take notice: FBM

LONDON: The Free Balochistan Movement (FBM) in a press statement said that Pakistan has intensified its oppressive and exploitative policies in Balochistan.

“The occupying Pakistani army, disregarding the internationally recognised laws of the world, has been disappearing and killing people and walks of life every school of thought in Balochistan. The recent murder of nine Baloch disappeared persons in a staged encounter in Ziarat is also an expansion of previous crimes. The victims were illegally kept incommunicado for months and years, before their brutal murder.”

In its statement, the Free Balochistan Moment urged the civilised world to play its role in stopping the Baloch genocide by Pakistan in Balochistan. The world is silent because of Pakistan’s blackmailing but their silence is emboldening Pakistan to consider itself exempt from international laws and accountability and continue its war crimes in Balochistan.

The Free Balochistan Moment added in its statement that the way the international community took notice of the human rights violations in East Timor and Kosovo and the massacre of 199 people in East Timor and Santa Cruz, the whole world took notice of it and made the Indonesian state answerable.

In the same way, the generals of Yugoslavia faced war crimes for the murder of Adam Jashari and his family in Kosovo. The international community intervened in East Timor and Kosovo and freed Kosovo from Yugoslavia and East Timor from Indonesia. In the same way, the world will have to break its silence on the bare aggression of occupying the state of Pakistan in Balochistan.

The Free Balochistan Movement in its statement further explained that the Pakistani army in Balochistan is suppressing the struggle for Baloch national independence through various tactics. In addition to forcibly disappearing, killing and dumping people, now the Pakistani army and agencies are killing the already disappeared people in staged encounters and blaming them to be resistance fighters, which are war crimes according to international laws.

The Free Balochistan Movement said that seven out of the nine people who were massacred in a fake encounter by the Pakistani army on July 14, 2022, in district Ziarat Balochistan, were already in the custody of the Pakistani army and intelligence agencies.

The victims disappeared many months and years ago. The families of these people were also protesting for their recovery and had also filed petitions in the Pakistani courts. The oppression of the Pakistani occupying forces in Balochistan has reached such an extent that even the relatives of the people killed in the fake encounters are being subjected to torture for peacefully protesting against the murder of their loved ones.

On 21 July 2022 in Quetta and previously in Karachi the Pakistani forces committed reprehensible violence against peaceful protests of Baloch women and children, these brutalities are clear proofs of how Pakistan wants to cover up its crimes against humanity in Occupied Balochistan.

FBM said in its statement that when Yugoslavia killed Adam Jashari along with his family in Kosovo, despite Jashari being a resistance fighter, this killing shook the consciousness of NATO and the United States and Kosovo was freed as a result of international intervention.

But in Balochistan, thousands of people have been forcibly disappeared and killed in custody by the Pakistani army and intelligence agencies. The tortured and mutilated bodies of enforced disappeared Baloch were dumped on streets in different areas in Balochistan.

The FBM in its statement asked, “Why is the world silent about Balochistan despite the clear violation of international laws? Why was there a dead silence on the recovery of mass graves containing over a hundred dead bodies in Khuzdar and other areas of Balochistan?

 The Free Balochistan Movement said it believes that the international community is silent regarding the Baloch Genocide by the Pakistani Army for its own interests. It is reluctant to raise the issue of human rights violations against Baloch and Pashtun to keep Pakistan away from China and Russia.

The Free Balochistan Movement hopes the entire international community, including Europe and the United States, will take notice of Pakistan’s war crimes in Balochistan and implement international laws through peacekeeping forces instead of being seduced and blackmailed by Pakistan.

The Free Balochistan Movement added in its statement that the Pakistani parliamentary parties in Balochistan are hand and glove with Pakistan in weakening the Baloch struggle for their own interests and personal privileges. The parliamentarian parties also try to deceive the Baloch nation, especially families of missing persons, into believing that they care for the sufferings of the Baloch people through the Pakistani judiciary which in reality is helping Pakistan to cover up the crimes of its army and agencies in Balochistan.