Since the photo was taken, aid has stopped being delivered because of security concerns. The situation is dire! Take action to end the humanitarian crisis in Syria -->
Free speech, human rights,Freedom, equality and accountability. We all human are same.Balochistan act for justice on a wide range of issues.Event and News related to Balochistan and world. Baloch In Balochistan have been disappeared and hanged and or murdered by Pakistan's military and securities agencies and Iran regime. Pakistan rarely allows journalists or human rights organizations to travel freely in Balochistan and coverage in the world press is inadequate.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
No one should suffer like this, no one.
This jaw-dropping photo published in The Guardian today shows the line for food at Syria's Yarmouk refugee camp. The UN says that people in this camp have been reduced to eating animal feed!
Since the photo was taken, aid has stopped being delivered because of security concerns. The situation is dire! Take action to end the humanitarian crisis in Syria -->
http://www.theguardian.com/world/picture/2014/feb/26/yarmouk-refugee-camp-damascus-syria
Since the photo was taken, aid has stopped being delivered because of security concerns. The situation is dire! Take action to end the humanitarian crisis in Syria -->
A Rebuttal to Hassan Nisar’s Piece About Balochistan.
By Adnan Aamir
In Pakistan, history is often distorted in textbooks and many intellectuals do the same to prove their arguments. Hassan Nisar is no exception.
In Pakistani media, he is the most vocal person who laments this practice and often gives lengthy lectures on talk shows that there is no such thing as Muslim Ummah and Islam has been hijacked by mullahs and so on.
Unfortunately, when it comes to Balochistan, he did the same for which he vehemently criticizes others – i.e. distortion of facts. He wrote acolumn in a leading Urdu daily of Pakistan that was more like a propaganda handout than a column by an independent and respected mainstream columnist of Pakistan.
Hassan Nisar is of the point of view that much is being said and written on Balochistan without realization of facts. So he made a modest effort to highlight the basic facts of Balochistan that have remained hidden otherwise.
Balochistan is not a subject that finds a mention in either columns or TV program of Hassan Nisar. Whatever transpires in the restive province, including the gross human rights violations such as the discovery of mass graves, is no news for Mr. Nisar. Yet, he considers it his duty to enlighten the people of Pakistan about the “reality” of Balochistan conflict.
Hassan Nisar writes in his column that he visited Quetta several times in order to appear in court hearings. During his visits, he met a lot of local people in airport lounges and Serena hotel. That’s how he got “first-hand” information about Balochistan, which he presents as more authentic than information shared by those who regularly cover Balochistan or the common people who live there.
This is an intellectual dishonesty of mythical proportion and coming from the pen of Hassan Nisar, who criticizes others for distorting the facts, makes it even a bigger moral crime.
Balochistan is the most ignored issue in Pakistani media. And whenever highlighted, it’s mostly for disinformation purpose like the column of Hassan Nisar.
The incorrect demographic figures about Balochistan are often used to present a false case that Baloch are not in majority in the province. Hassan Nisar has followed the same practice to present a compelling case vis-à-vis Baloch population of Balochistan. His readers will happily buy all the incorrect facts written by Hassan Nisar because the source of their knowledge about Balochistan is disinforming articles written by right wing leaning, so-called intellectuals of Pakistan. Hassan Nisar has however failed to mention that Brahvi and Baloch are the same and inseparable in this argument.
Hassan Nisar has quoted the number of members of different Baloch militant groups being just a few hundreds. Even the IG of FC has quoted the number of Baloch militants being between 5,000 to 10,000.
What’s the source of Hassan Nasir’s information about these figures? First-hand information from common people sitting in airport lounges, gatherings of like-mined intellectuals in drawing rooms in Lahore or just figment of imagination. Surely, the source of his information can be anything but a reliable source.
He has also used the cliché that foreign elements are involved in Balochistan insurgency and also named some countries. Again, without any reliable source of information to support his claims.
Mr. Nisar often highlights the trivial matters relating to Lahore in his TV program but even the biggest issues in Balochistan escape his attention. He is not bothered by the sense of deprivation in Balochistan, the historical Voice of Baloch Missing Persons long march and discovery of Mass graves. But he vividly sees the foreign hands and hints to write about it in future. This sort of attitude can be anything but reasonable for an otherwise well-respected columnist.
This column has exposed the progressive credentials of Hassan Nisar and unveiled the real character that is hidden behind the façade of his intellectual character. Those who have any regard for rationality will ignore the pearls of wisdom coming from Hassan Nisar about Balochistan as sheer propaganda. As far as the fans of Hassan Nisar are concerned who staunchly believe in the text of Pakistan Studies books, they will make him their new hero and share his columns to prove that foreign elements are creating disturbance in Balochistan.
His factually incorrect column has proved a point that even the most liberal columnists, intellectuals and writers become hate-mongering propaganda masters when it comes to Balochistan. That’s an inconvenient truth which has gained strength after the publication of his column.
Adnan Aamir is a Freelance writer, researcher and blogger. He writes about politics, current affairs and books. He tweets at@iAdnanAamir and blogs at www.Adnan-Aamir.com
Warning that Pakistan is in danger of collapse within months.
PAKISTAN could collapse within months, one of the more influential counter-insurgency voices in Washington says.
The warning comes as the US scrambles to redeploy its military forces and diplomats in an attempt to stem rising violence and anarchy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we're calling the war on terror now," said David Kilcullen, a former Australian Army officer who was a specialist adviser for the Bush administration and is now a consultant to the Obama White House.
"You just can't say that you're not going to worry about al-Qaeda taking control of Pakistan and its nukes," he said.
As the US implements a new strategy in
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| David Kilcullen... Pakistan keeps him awake at night. Photo: Supplied Central Asia so comprehensive that some analysts now dub the cross-border conflict "Obama's war", Dr Kilcullen said time was running out for international efforts to pull both countries back from the brink. |
When he unveiled his new "Afpak" policy in Washington last month, the US President, Barack Obama, warned that while al-Qaeda would fill the vacuum if Afghanistan collapsed, the terrorist group was already rooted in Pakistan, plotting more attacks on the US.
"The safety of people round the world is at stake," he said.
Laying out the scale of the challenges facing the US in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Dr Kilcullen put the two countries invaded by US-led forces after the September 11 attacks on the US on a par - each had a population of more than 30 million.
"But Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al-Qaeda sitting in two-thirds of the country which the Government does not control," he told the Herald .
Added to that, the Pakistani security establishment ignored direction from the elected Government in Islamabad as waves of extremist violence spread across the whole country - not only in the tribal wilds of the Afghan border region.
Cautioning against an excessive focus by Western governments on Afghanistan at the expense of Pakistan, Dr Kilcullen said that "the Kabul tail was wagging the dog". Comparing the challenges in the two, he said Afghanistan was a campaign to defend a reconstruction program. "It's not really about al-Qaeda. Afghanistan doesn't worry me. Pakistan does."
But he was hesitant about the level of resources for, and the likely impact of, Washington's new drive to emulate an Iraq-style "surge" by sending an extra 21,000 troops to Afghanistan.
"In Iraq, five brigades went into the centre of Baghdad in five months. In Afghanistan, it will be two combat brigades [across the country] in 12 months. That will have much less of a punch effect than we had in Iraq.
"We can muddle through in Afghanistan. It is problematic and difficult but we know what to do. What we don't know is if we have the time or if we can afford the cost of what needs to be done."
Dr Kilcullen said a fault line had developed in the West's grasp of circumstances on each side of the Durand Line, the disputed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"In Afghanistan, it's easy to understand, difficult to execute. But in Pakistan, it is very difficult to understand and it's extremely difficult for us to generate any leverage, because Pakistan does not want our help.
"In a sense there is no Pakistan - no single set of opinion. Pakistan has a military and intelligence establishment that refuses to follow the directions of its civilian leadership. They have a tradition of using regional extremist groups as unconventional counterweights against India's regional influence."
In the absence of a regional diplomatic initiative to build economic and trade confidences before tackling the security issue, the implication, Dr Kilcullen said, was that India alone could not give Pakistan the security guarantees Islamabad required.
The special US envoy Richard Holbrooke has been charged with brokering a regional compact by reaching out to Iran, Russia and China, and Dr Kilcullen said: "This is exactly what he's good at and it could work.
"But will it? It requires regional architecture to give the Pakistani security establishment a sense of security which might make them stop supporting the Taliban," he said.
"The best case scenario is that the US can deal with Afghanistan, with President Obama giving leadership while the extra American troops succeed on the ground - at the same time as Mr Holbrooke seeks a regional security deal," he said. The worst case was that Washington would fail to stabilise Afghanistan, Pakistan would collapse and al-Qaeda would end up running what he called 'Talibanistan.'
"This is not acceptable. You can't have al-Qaeda in control of Pakistan's missiles," he said.
"It's too early to tell which way it will go. We'll start to know about July. That's the peak fighting season … and a month from the Afghan presidential election."
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/warning-that-pakistan-is-in-danger-of-collapse-within-months-20090412-a40u.html#ixzz2uZ817DrS
Families of missing Baloch march for justice .
Relatives of people who have been disappeared or killed in Pakistan march more than 2,000km seeking UN intervention.
Mundera, Pakistan - Qadeer Rekhi is a long way from home.
More than 2,150 kilometres away, in fact - that's how much ground he and a small group of others, mostly women and children, have covered by foot since they began their long march on October 27 from Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province. They are due to finish their journey on Friday with their arrival in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital.
Rekhi, known almost ubiquitously as "Mama" (Urdu for "uncle"), and his 15 fellow marchers are protesting the enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings of their family members in Balochistan, a province where Pakistani security forces have been battling an armed Baloch separatist movement since 2005.
Rekhi's son, Jalil, was the information secretary of the Baloch Republican Party (BRP), a separatist political party with strong ties to the armed struggle for Baloch independence. He was abducted from his home in Quetta in February 2009. For two years, Mama was unable to get the authorities to provide any information on his son, until November 23, 2011, when he got a phone call telling him that his son's body had been found in Mand, near the Iranian border, almost 750 kilometres away from where he was abducted.
"His body was badly injured - there were three gunshot wounds, to his chest and head - and he had also been tortured. There were bruises all over his body. His hand was broken, and one of his eyes was badly wounded. His back had been burned with cigarettes. There was still fresh blood on him when we received the body," said the 72-year-old, clad in traditional Baloch dress as he walked through the town of Mundera on the 104th day of the group's march.
Rekhi's case is just one of more than 1,000 documented by the Voice of Missing Baloch (VBMP), a rights organisation that has collated information on Baloch missing persons and fights their families' cases in court since 2009. According to the group, there have been more than 2,825 documented cases of enforced disappearances of Baloch activists since 2005.
And the bodies keep appearing: On January 18, 13 highly decomposed bodies were found in the Tootak area of Balochistan's Khuzdar district. And on January 31, Nasrullah Baloch, the VBMP's chairperson, brought the authorities' attention to another mass grave in Khuzdar that was said to contain more than 100 bodies - some identified as belonging to Baloch pro-independence activists.
'Propagandistic claims'
The Pakistani government denies that it is responsible for the deaths or the disappearances, and has established a judicial commission to investigate reports of those who have gone missing.
"This is a completely incorrect and propagandistic claim, that there are more than 2,000 people missing," said a senior official in the provincial home department, speaking on condition of anonymity, when asked about the figures. The official, who deals directly with missing persons' cases, said that, according to the government and Supreme Court, there were currently only 27 active cases regarding alleged enforced disappearances by the state.
"No state agency is involved - either federal or provincial - in this matter," the official said.
The Commission of Inquiry, meanwhile, a separate judicial body, said it is dealing with 1,475 reported cases of enforced disappearances from all over the country.
Zohra Yusuf, the chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, says the issue of disappearances is "a core rights issue" and that the situation is "very serious".
"The issue of missing people is one that despite the attention that the marchers are trying to get, there are continuing cases of disappearances. The Supreme Court itself has not made much headway in getting people back to their homes - there have been some cases where people have come back - but the number of disappeared is still very high," she told Al Jazeera, while lauding the efforts of Rekhi and his fellow protesters. "I think it's a historic march in the context of Pakistan, because I don't think anyone has undertaken this form of peaceful protest before, although they have received threats along the way."
Those threats have been ever-present, according to those marching, and have ranged from daily threatening phone calls to police barricades being set up to prevent the group from marching further; from intimidating security cordons being set up around their nightly encampments to unidentified men cursing at them along their route.
At one point, in the city of Multan, policemen threatened the marchers with force if they did not turn back. "As we were passing by Cantt, we were stopped, and guns were pointed at us - at the women and children, too. We were told be silent. We were very angry. This is shameful, raising a gun at women - how can you then talk about honour? You are disgraceful!"
'You do not want us'
Farzana Majeed, 28, is one of those women. Her brother, Zakir, was a student activist for the Baloch Students Organisation (Azad), a pro-independence Baloch student group, and was abducted while en route to a friend's house in rural Balochistan.
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| The core group of 16 marchers have been joined by others along their route - sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for days [Asad Hashim/Al Jazeera] |
That was on June 8, 2009. He remains missing to this day, almost five years later.
"For five years, I have been out on the streets continuously - sometimes outside the Karachi Press Club, sometimes outside Quetta Press Club, sometimes outside the Islamabad Press Club. And now this lengthy, difficult long march from Quetta to Islamabad. But I don't know why the state here does not understand," said Majeed's sister.
"Does the state think that the Baloch insurgency, the freedom struggle - if my brother was a student leader for that, or the other Baloch are activists or leaders - that they can then just pick them and take them away like this, keep them locked up for years?"
Majeed abandoned her pursuit of a masters degree in biochemistry in 2009 to advocate for her brother's cause. She says that if her brother, and others, are accused of waging an armed campaign against the state, then they should be produced by the state in court and charged with that offence.
"But for the last five years, you have not brought anyone to court. So this means that [the state] does not want to do anything. So this means that you do not want us to be with you. It is completely obvious."
Joining Majeed and Rekhi in their march are 14 others - eight women, three men and three children, including Beauragh Baloch, Jalil Rekhi's eight-year-old son, who suffers from a congenital heart condition and says he "hates the Pakistani army and ISI" for allegedly abducting his father.
The marchers occasionally raise slogans against the government, or in favour of Baloch rights, but often simply march in silence. As they make their way through Pakistan, they have picked up more marchers and protesters along the way. Some accompanied them for only a few minutes; others joined them for days.
'The Baloch want freedom'
Mir Muhammad Ali Talpur, originally from the town of Hyderabad, in Sindh, marched with the protesters for 20 days, in two stints.
"Mine is a deep, spiritual involvement in the Baloch national struggle. Now the Baloch want freedom. It's not about this demand or that demand... it's now about freedom, the Baloch are fighting for freedom," said the 68-year-old former fighter with the armed Baloch separatist movement. Talpur lost his hands in the struggle in 1973, during the first armed battle against the state. "An occupational hazard," he said of his maimed hands, which were injured while he was preparing explosives.
Balochistan has seen three localised uprisings against the state - in 1948, 1958 and 1963 - with broader armed movements taking place from 1973-77 and from 2005, after the killing of tribal leader Nawab Akbar Bugti. That fight continues, with armed Baloch groups claiming responsibility for attacks on security forces and government targets that killed at least 274 civilians.
"Now the political and social ethos is defined by the sarmachars and those who are fighting - these two aresarmachars, those who are walking," he said, using the Balochi word for an activist who fights for one's rights regardless of danger.
A message of defiance
For Talpur, who said many of his own fellow fighters have either gone missing or been found dead in the last five years, the marchers' protest is less about expectation for bringing about change, and more about sending a message of defiance.
"It is about taking the battle to the enemy. And now you just imagine, millions of people… who didn't know about this, know, because they have seen these people, seen us walking. Millions of people know, everybody that the long march people have come in touch with, there is certainly a definitive change. And you know, that is another thing: This is a message of defiance, defiance of the establishment. [And] defiance is contagious. This is what the establishment is afraid of."
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| Mir Muhammad Ali Talpur is a former fighter with the armed Baloch independence movement [Asad Hashim/Al Jazeera] |
The message has certainly resonated in parts of the country. In towns and cities in Sindh, where a long-running separatist movement has recently been gaining steam, and southern Punjab, the marchers were given rousing welcomes by crowds ranging from dozens to hundreds of people. Rekhi and his group have stayed throughout their 104-day journey with friends and well-wishers - being unable to afford staying in hotels, and worried about their own security.
It was in central and northern Punjab, long considered the heartland of Pakistan's establishment - a term used to describe the military, intelligence services and the state apparatus - that the welcome has been less forthcoming.
Nevertheless, the marchers march on. With just 40 kilometres to go to Islamabad, the federal capital, they are preparing to meet with representatives of the UN Human Rights Council and foreign diplomats, they said.
"We are not going to the rulers, we are going to the United Nations only. We will go to the UN office and do a sit-in there. If we had any hope from the rulers, then we would not have to do this long march," said Muhammad Zahid, 18, a Baloch student from Dera Ghazi Khan.
It's a sentiment echoed by all those marching - and by none more so than Farzana Majeed.
"Look, the Pakistani parliament, or the Pakistani government, or the military - if they wanted to do something, they would have done it in these last five years. In the last five years, they would have heard my voice. I have been ignored all this time - now what do they want, that I should spend another five years on these streets? Enough is enough. We want our rights."
Follow Asad Hashim on Twitter: @AsadHashim
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/02/families-missing-baloch-march-justice-2014227101949360898.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/02/families-missing-baloch-march-justice-2014227101949360898.html
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