In another incident depicting grave atrocities committed by the Pakistani military forces against the ethnic minority Baluchistan population, Pakistan Army coerced the Baluch drivers to journey through the vast desert. Drivers hailing from the ethnic minority areas of Balochistan were asked to abandon their vehicles at distance and instead were asked to march on foot through the hot desert to their homes in the Chagai district near the border with Afghanistan.
Pakistan Army’s Frontier Corps, the paramilitary forces, on April 16 allegedly harassed the Baluch drivers and subjected them to torture as they first ordered them to evacuate their vehicles. They later asked the journeying drivers to take a route from the desert in the exorbitant heat to make it to their homes. Drivers were reported to have suffered from dehydration and battled hunger and the heat as they travelled through the desert towards their homes.
Baluch driver ends up losing his life due to Pak Army’s torture
As a result of the Pakistani Army’s torture, a Baluch driver also ended up losing his life. Violent protests broke out in the Nokkundi and Dalbandin areas of the Chagai district as they demanded justice and blamed Pakistan’s security forces for subjecting the Baluch population to torture. However, in their response, Pakistan’s Army stated that the killed driver had breached orders and tries to speed away despite being signalled to stop. The incident, they said, occurred in the Panch Raik area near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Narrating his ordeal to Dawn, a Baluch driver Habib said: “I with my few other friends travelled for six hours on foot and luckily found a vehicle in midway which brought us to Nokkundi. We were told by the security forces to leave the border area and go back.”
In the footage that emerged on social media at least three people lying in the sands in the middle of a desert due to health complications from being made to walk in the desert. The Chagai district houses the Chairman of the Pakistani Senate, Sadiq Sanjrani of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP). The region is widely known as the Pakistani nuclear test site.
“The billion-dollar Reko Diq and Saindak copper-gold projects are located in Chagai. Still, poor people are dying of starvation and thirst in Chagai. This is how Balochistan is,” Kiyya Baloch, a freelance journalist questioned in a tweet, expressing condemnation of the Pakistan Army’s conduct.