Muslim mob targets Christian locality in Gujranwala ‘for disrespecting Islam.

LAHORE - In a renewed attack on minorities, a violent Muslim mob attacked a Christian locality in Gujranwala on Wednesday, damaging shops, houses and vehicles belonging to the local Christians following a clash between the youths of the two communities last night, Pakistan Today has learnt.

According to initial information, a group of Christian boys was snubbed by a local cleric for playing music on their cell phones while passing by a mosque on Tuesday evening.

“Our boys were passing the mosque when the prayer leader objected to their playing music on cell phones. The boys turned off the music at that moment but switched it on again after covering some distance. The cleric raised a clamour and accused the boys of showing disrespect to Islam. As word spread of the incident, we immediately went to the police post in our colony and shared our security concerns with them. The police told us not to worry and assured us that they would contain the situation but no measures were taken,” Pervaiz, a resident of Francis Colony in Gujranwala, told Pakistan Today.

He said that around 2pm, a Muslim mob from the nearby Naroki village attacked the neighbourhood, ransacking shops, houses and around 5-7 vehicles parked on the road. “We saw a police mobile of the area’s checkpost parked in the vicinity but they did not intervene and let the mob damage our property,” he said, adding that the mob dispersed after local Christians took out their weapons and started firing in the air to deter them.

Pakistan Today made repeated attempts to contact the police officials concerned, including Regional Police Officer Amin Waince but they did not receive the calls.

After playing the role of a silent spectator, the police took action and resorted to aerial firing and hurling stones indiscriminately  at the mob to disperse it. The mob also pelted stones back at the police.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2013/04/03/news/national/muslim-mob-targets-christian-locality-in-gujranwala-for-disrespecting-islam/

ICAD and IVBMP Rally: Faiz Baluch speaking outside 10 Downing Street London.





 
 

 Quetta:The Army and FC raided houses of Baloch civilians in New Kahan, Pasni, and Dera Bugti

Pakistani Military and other security forces are continuing their offensives across Balochistan as pro-Pakistan political parties prepare for election. 

On 1st April the FC raided several houses in New Kahan Quetta and resorted to aerial firing which created panic among the residents. 

According to the Baloch National Voice (BNV) Pakistani security forces harassed women and children and looted valuables from houses including four motorcycles, six bicycles, around four dozen blankets, two dozen sacks of stocked grain, mobile phones, jewelleries, prayers mates from Masjids and other goods. 

The BNV further said that a vehicle of security forces overturned while chasing resident due which several Pakistani soldiers have presumably died. An ambulance was seen carrying casualties from the scene of accident.

The Baloch National Voice had blamed the governor of Balochistan for directing the Pakistani forces to conduct the raid in New Kahan. 

The Baloch Human Rights Organisation staged a protest demonstration against News Kahan operation at Quetta Press Club. While strongly condemning the operation the BHRO activists urged the international community and UN to take notice of state atrocities in Balochistan. 

Meanwhile sources reported that at least one person was killed during an operation in Doda Tibba, Mohan Pat and other areas of Sui, Dera Bugti on Tuesday. A number of armoured vehicles of Pakistani forces raided the Baloch villages in the area and indiscriminately targeted the populace.

Many houses of the innocent Baloch villagers were also reportedly set on fire by the forces after being looted of valuables. A Baloch man named Fareed Bugti s/o Sobani Bugti was killed and a woman named Sibr Bibi daughter of Sohrab Bugti was wounded. 

Separately, Pakistani forces have arrested several persons during operation in Kachi Baig Qambrani area of Quetta Tuesday. A Baloch man named Shahzad Ahmad Baloch has been abducted from Ormara bazaar in broad day light in the presence of several eye-witnesses. 

A large number of Baloch women and children staged a sit-in protest on main Pasni road and demanded immediate release of Shahzad Ahmad Baloch. The protestors were sitting on the road until the filing of this report.

 Karachi:Baloch Human Rights Organisation staged a protest demonstration against the abduction of Baloch journalist Haji Abdul Razzak Baloch and thousands of other Baloch activists at Karachi Press Club on Sunday. 

A large number of Baloch women and children including the families of abducted Baloch activists took part in the protest demonstration and demanded the immediate release of their loved ones. The protesters chanted slogans against state security agencies. They were also carrying pictures of enforced-disappeared persons and banners inscribed with slogans against Baloch genocide and state terrorism in Balochistan. 

Addressing the demonstration the leaders of the BHRO said Pakistani intelligence agencies abducted Baloch journalist Haji Abdul Razzak on the night of 24 March from Chakiwara area of Lyari in Karachi. They said his whereabouts remains unknown to date. 

“The family of Haji Razzak Baloch is very concerned about his condition and well-being. Mr Baloch is the only sole bread earner of the family and his absence has traumatised the family in many ways,” said the BHRO leaders. 

The Baloch Human Rights Organisation feared that Haji Razzak will be subjected to torture and killed in the custody like hundreds of other Baloch activists. 

On the other hand, the BHRO said, Pakistani military is continuing their offensives across Balochistan. They said a military operation was conducted in Niyabad and Fakeer Colony region of Gawadar Balochistan. At least two Baloch namely Ibrahim and Jan Mohammad Baloch were abducted during the house-to-house search operation. 

The BHRO further said Jalil Baloch, Sanaullah Baloch and Naseer Baloch were abducted from Arbab Karam Khan Road Quetta on 28 January this year and their whereabouts remains unknown. “Five Baloch Children all under 20, Abdullah, Roshan, Amanullah, Azad Khan and Aslam, were abducted from New Kahan Quetta on 26 March,” BRO statement read. 

The Baloch Human Rights Organisation urged the International Community and Human Rights Organisation to take notice of on-going enforced-disappearances, extra judicial killings and military operations in Balochistan. They said the victims of disappearance include children, students, intellectuals, doctors, lawyers and people all spheres of life. “UN and International Human Rights bodies should play their practical role to stop Baloch genocide by Pakistan.”

Two enforced disappeared persons killed and dumped and several others abducted.

Karachi:The state security forces have killed and dumped at least two previously abducted Baloch activists, and abducted several others.

Ibrahim Baloch, a political activist was killed and dumped two day after his abduction, on 27 March 2013. Mr Ibrahim was a resident of Besima and his mutilated dead body was dumped in the Ferozabad area near Khuzdar, Balochistan.

Ibrahim Baloch was tortured and received bullet shots in head and chest. In continuity of ‘kill and dump policy’ on 26th of March 2013 mutilated dead body of Kareem Marri was found from Hub town of Balochistan. 

Body of another Baloch activist, Kareem Marri, was also found dumped in Karach. Sources reported that he was also subjected to brutal torture. One of hands was broken and he was also given electricity shocks in captivity. 

He too was shot in the head and beard at least three bullet shot wounds. Kareem was a resident of Goth Ramzan Marri and he was abducted on 28/11/2012 from a crowded area in Sakuran region of Hub industrial area of Balochistan. 

According to sources he was arrested in presence of 10s of eye-witnesses in a busy public area. Although, he was unarmed, he strongly resisted against his arrest. The armed Pakistani thugs and their local agents brutally tortured him on the spot and arrested and dragged him to their car in injured condition. 

Pakistani forces have reportedly raided the New Kahan area of Quetta and abducted at least five Marri Baloch youth on 26 March 2013.

Separately, a Balochi language writer, journalist and social activist, Haji Abdul Razaaq Baloch, has gone missing from Karachi’s Liyari area, family sources confirmed.

Mr. Baloch’s family sources said he went missing between 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm on March 24. No one knows about his whereabouts since he was seen last.

They said he had remained affiliated with Daily Tawar, a pro-Baloch nationalist newspaper whose reporters had been kidnapped by Pakistani security forces, tortured and killed in the past as well.

Mr. Baloch was employed by the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation and the sole breadwinner for his family. The family has made a passionate appeal for his immediate recovery.

Several Baloch political activists kidnapped from Balochistan have been found dead in Karachi in the recent times.

The BNM and other political parties have said Mr Baloch has been abducted by Pakistani security forces. 

Baloch people observes the 27 March as a Black Day against occupation of Balochista

Pakistani security forces attacked a protest rally against occupation in Quetta, several were reportedly injured.
At least 17 people including women and children killed in Dera Bugti military offensives.


Baloch nation observed the 27 March as a Black Day to mark the occupation of the Eastern Part of Balochistan by Pakistan on 27 March 1948. 

The Baloch pro-freedom parties had appealed the Baloch nation to observe shutter-down strike and organise protest rallies to mark the day to express their hatred against occupation. 

The people of Balochistan have responded positively to the strike call by the Baloch Salvation Front, Baloch National Movement, the Baloch Martyrs Committee, the Baloch Student Organisation – Azad and other pro-liberation party. Protest rallies took to streets in almost all major cities of Balochistan. Thousands of participants were carrying flags of Balochistan and chanting slogan of FREEDOM. They also chanted slogans in favour of Baloch resistance movement and condemned state atrocities in Balochistan. 

The Pakistani security forces attacked and batten charged the BSO-Azad and BNM rally in Quetta due to which several Baloch activists were injured.

A shutter down strikes were also held in other major cities of Balochistan including Khuzdar, Hub, kalat, surab, Mastung, Kharan, Noshki, Dalbandin, Gawadar, Turbat and Kohlu and Dera Bugti areas of Balochistan. 

Meanwhile at least 17 people including women and children were killed in major military operations in surrounding areas of Dera Bugti, Balochistan. Hundreds of vehicles of the Pakistani armed forces laid a siege to dozens of villages and started to indiscriminately attack the houses of the poor Baloch villagers. 

More than a dozen Baloch people were reportedly killed during the offensives. The BRP’s central spokesperson in a tweet wrote, “Pakistani forces have started massive military offensives in different areas of Dera Bugti, Naseerabad, Jaffarabad and adjoining Jacobabad area. Several hundred vehicles of Pakistani forces laid a siege to many villages including Go pat, Muhan Pat, Sanri, Doda dibba and others in all three districts.”

He further claimed that at least 17 innocent Baloch villagers including women, children and an infant were killed during the operation. The victims were identified as Haleem Bugti, his wife Zadi bibi and daughter Khairah Bibi; Bewaragh Bugti and his seven months old child Jamal; Basheer Bugti; Peesh Bugti; Murad Baksh, his wife and three children; Laddaw s/o Abdullah Bugti and Karghi Bugti, his wife along with their two children.

He said that the exact figure of casualties could not be ascertained as the offensives continued with full intensity and forces were burning houses while the inhabitants including women, children and elderly were still trapped inside the houses and were not allowed to evacuate.

The BRP spokesman also alleged that at least twenty Baloch families were abducted during the operation including that of Gaja Bugti, Hameed Bugti and Garra Bugti. He said the lives of the abducted people are in extreme danger as the forces usually take the abducted to unknown torture cells, inhumanely torture them and later kill and dump them in deserted areas across Balochistan and in Karachi.

The Baloch populace was reportedly attacked when they were staging a protest demonstration to condemn the illegal occupation of Balochistan on March 27, 1948. 

Guess who is coming to the defence of the fascist rightwing Jamaat-e-Islami of Bangladesh? The leftwing commentators of India's liberal media! Disgraceful conduct by these 'Muslim patriots' who have a record of kowtowing to Islamofacsists as a way of attacking America.

Truth About Jamaat Labelled fundamentalist, the Jamaat (right, Jamaat leader Sayedee, who was sentenced to death after being held guilty for crimes in ’71) isn’t guilty of sectarian violence against Hindus Hindus, often oppressed economically, have their lives secure The BJI has relinquished its goal of establishing the ‘rule of Allah’; also promised to reserve 33 per cent organisational posts for women The best thing about Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (BJI) is that it doesn’t kill Hindus simply because of their faith. To be honest, the Jamaat pales into insignificance before monstrous Hindutva outfits that regularly target Muslims in India. This is the plain truth about the much-maligned Islamic party next door. Of course, Indian and western media don’t allow facts to get in the way of a good story. In their coverage of the escalating unrest—the ongoing war crimes trials, the Shahbag Square protests, and the flaring up of tension after Jamaat leader Delwar Hossein Sayedee was sentenced to death over atrocities committed in 1971—the Jamaat is relentlessly dem­onised. The latest political turmoil has claimed 84 lives, mainly Jamaat cadres gunned down by security forces. Outlook was on board the Boeing 747 President Pranab Mukherjee flew to Dhaka in even as Bangladesh literally bur­ned. Indian high commission offici­als sweating it out on the tarmac were relieved once ‘Big Brother’ had arrived in a Jumbo Jet. “The size of the  aircraft matters, yaar. It sends the right message to the host, it exudes power,” a first secretary remarked smugly. But the ground situation in the capital city was so scary that when artillery pieces boomed in a ceremonial welcome for the Indian president, some in the entourage mistook it for police firing and were visibly shaken. Anti-Jamaat demonstrations at Dhaka’s Shahbag Square by secular-liberal forces and spiralling countrywide violence has turned the spotlight on the BJI, which went on the offensive after February 28, when Sayedee was handed the death sentence. It’s an electoral ally of former PM Begum Khaleda Zia’s Ban­gladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), lab­elled anti-India, unlike Sheikh Hasina’s ruling Awami League, widely perceived as pro-India. The two parties, backed by their coalition partners, are contenders for power in elections due next year, if they can agree upon the composition of a neutral interim administration—a con­stitutional requirement to ensure fair elections. Even as the Awami League government takes on the Jamaat, does it constitute a clear and present threat to India? Jamaatis are con­spicuous even in predominantly Muslim Bangladesh, beca­use they sport a beard and a skull cap. But does wearing Islam on their sleeves turn them into sworn enemies of India, or Hindus, who comprise 10 per cent of Bangladesh’s population? Is the Jamaat anti-India, or anti-Hindu, or both? Neither Indian diplomats in Dhaka nor Hindu community leaders can recall a murder of a Hindu for purely religious reasons in years. Hindus have been kil­led by BNP-Jamaat followers, but were essentially victims of political vendetta. They were targeted not as Hindus, but because they were perceived as adversa­ries owing allegiance to the Awami Lea­gue. It can be compared with political violence in West Bengal, where CPI(M)-Trinamool clashes  reg­ularly claim lives of political workers—many of them Muslims, and from either party. A spokesman for the Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (HBCUC) told Outlook that an elderly priest of a Hindu temple in Banskhali near Chittagong was beaten to death hours after Sayedee was sentenced on February 28, but Ind­ian high commission officials insist that the death didn’t have religious overto­nes. Interestingly, in December 2012, a Hindu youth called Biswajit Das was killed in a union clash by members of the Awami League’s students’ wing, Chhatra League, in broad daylight. The 24-year-old victim was captured on camera scr­eaming that he was an apolitical Hindu. Biswajit’s gruesome, cold-bloo­ded mur­der has blotted the Awami League’s copybook. Bangladeshi Hindus may not live under the shadow of the sword, but life for them is not a bed of roses either. The vicious attacks they suffer are economic in nature, but wreak havoc nonetheless. Their homes, shops and cultivable land are targeted, forcing them to migrate to India so that their properties can be appropriated. Hindu temples and women are special targets. The temples are desecrated, the women abd­ucted and married after conversion at gunpoint. Even so, the HBCUC spok­esman said that pogroms like Gujarat or Kok­rajhar against the minority community are inconceivable. The Jamaat is a key constituent of the BNP-led alliance because its support is crucial in around 80 seats of the 345-strong Bangladesh parliament. And the Jamaat, despite its fundamentalist image, is hardly averse to change. At the election commission’s prodding, it amended its charter, bidding farewell to its goal of establishing the ‘rule of Allah’. And Hindutva poster girls like Sushma Swaraj, Shaina Chudasama, Nirmala Seetharaman, Smriti Irani and Meenakshi Lekhi would be delighted to know that the Jamaat has promised to reserve 33 per cent of organisational posts for women. In September 2011, Manmohan Singh famously said that “25 per cent of Ban­gladeshis swear by the Jamaat, are very anti-Indian and are in the clutches of the isi”. However, a pertinent question: what has South Block done to win them over since? New Delhi refuses to have any truck with the Jamaat, and calls it a terrorist outfit in cahoots with Pakistan, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Indian diplomats have established formal contacts with all political parties in Bangladesh except the BJI. It’s doubtful if they even speak informally. The Jamaat remains a dark mystery for India which has no idea of what’s going on inside it. It’s high time India plays ball with the Jamaat. America’s concern for the Jam­aat is pretty evident: it has even shrugged off gratuitous Indian advice to engage only with democratic and secular forces in New Delhi’s backyard. Wash­ington has questioned irregularities in the war crimes trials and told Dhaka that human rights violations won’t be tolerated. The US obviously sees the BJI as a key player in its plans to coronate Kha­leda Zia, even as India finalises its stra­tegy to ensure another term for Sheikh Hasina. By S.N.M. Abdi in Dhaka http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?284276#.UUmaBdlx35M.facebook