Highlighting the gross human rights violations by Pakistan and China using the ‘brutal military machines’, the Baloch, Sindhi and other leaders provided insights about how the respective governments are exploiting the resources of the region and eliminating their communities by way of keeping them undernourished and illiterate.
Speaking at the conference at the Press Club in Geneva, Dr Lakhumal Luhana, General Secretary of the World Sindhi Congress (WSC) said that during the partition in 1947, Sindh came to Pakistan and that was the start of a “very darkest era”. Sindh, according to the official figures, provides 70 per cent of the resources of the wealth of the revenue of Pakistan. However, the situation is such that 7 million children under the age of 10 are out of education, he said.
Luhana further said that the real figures are that 67 per cent of girls are out of education. About 80 per cent of the schools don’t have water or sanitation facilities.
He said that according to the Supreme Court, the drinking water that the people of Sindh use is not even suitable for animal consumption and it is creating a pandemic of hepatitis and tuberculosis. Talking about the land captured by the Pakistani government, he said they are taking over millions of acres of land, they are settling people from outside so Sindhis can be converted into a minority on their own motherland.
World Sindhi Congress leader continued saying that currently, 60 per cent of the youth who have passed through universities are out of employment.
“Level of malnutrition, according to the UN, on an average 70 per cent of people in Sindh suffer from malnutrition. 10 children die of malnutrition every day in Sindh,” he added. He highlighted that if you raise the voice, “you are abducted, you’re gone. You’re missing”.
There are hundreds of Sindhi youth who are missing for many, many years. Earlier there was 29 per cent of the population was of Sindhis but today they constitute only 6 per cent due to the atrocities being committed on them,” he noted. On the other hand, talking about gross human rights violations in China, Marco Respinti, Director-in-Charge of Bitter Winter Magazine, said China is a totalitarian state in which people exist only as functions of the ruling elite.
“Basic Rights are blatantly denied, and liberty is severely restricted as a mere concession of the government for the sake of the government itself,” he said.
Talking about the Chinese government, he said in China, the government is not “instituted for serving the common good it is merely the other name of the Chinese Communist Party or CCP and democratically in power since October 1, 1959, which was then responsible for millions and millions of death, possibly killer number one in all human history”.
The only historical rival of the CCP in this staggering slaughter of human beings fellow was the communist Soviet Union but while USSR is gone, Communist China is still there growing in the world prominence, Respinti added. Focusing on human rights violations in Balochistan, Dr Naseer Dashti, Executive President of the Baloch Human Rights Council (BHRC) said since the occupation of Balochistan, by Pakistan in 1948, the history of the Baloch is a tale of “blood and tears”.
As efforts are being made by Baloch nationalists to regain their independence, Pakistan has unleashed a reign of terror for the last many decades.
Talking about the aspects of human rights violations in Balochistan, he said, “The one aspect is the genocidal act, which includes enforced disappearances, the phenomenon where the Pakistani military and its security agencies, they pick up human rights activists, political activists, doctors, Indian students, teachers, and they keep them incommunicado for years.”
“The families are unaware about the whereabouts of their loved ones,” he added. He stated that estimated 4,833 persons have been disappeared since 2006.
There is another aspect of human rights violation which is called the “kill and dump policy”, he said. “The Pakistani security agencies, with the help of their collaborative auxiliary organization. They pick up people torture them, and throw their mutilated bodies in desolate areas. And this is a routine affair in Balochistan,” Dashti said.
“Hundreds of students, teachers, political activists, social activists, journalists have been killed in such ways. And there is a phenomenon of mass graves, found in many locations and Balochistan since 2011,” he added.
He said that there is another aspect of human rights violation which is the “conversion of secular Baloch society into a religious fundamentalist one”.
“Thousands of religious schools are sponsored by the Pakistani military where the children are taught a very medieval version of religion and they are trained to become jihadis or to convert humanity into Islam, he further said. He continued saying that there is another aspect of human rights violation, which is “resource exploitation”.
He highlighted that Balochistan is one of the richest regions and Pakistan and China are collaborating, extracting gold uranium, gas, oil etc.
Dashti said another aspect of human rights violation is “cultural genocide where alien language has been imposed in Balochistan”. In all practical purposes, the Balochs are leaving under the shadow of the Pakistani military with its religious, fundamentalists, and human rights violations and genocide acts, he said.
“It’s high time for the international community to raise voices against these brutal military machines of the region, he added.