
HRC 49th Session General debate on Item 4 situation in Balochistan
We are deeply concerned about the situation in Balochistan which has been monitored for years by the Brussels-based NGO Human Rights Without Frontiers.
We are deeply concerned about the situation in Balochistan which has been monitored for years by the Brussels-based NGO Human Rights Without Frontiers.
It has already depleted the gold, uranium, and other valuable deposits in many parts of Balochistan. Now, the Baloch coast is nearly void of marine life, which has been the backbone of their economy for centuries.
In a written statement submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council (Forty-ninth session 28 February–1 April 2022) which was submitted through Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience, a non-governmental organization in special consultative status in the United Nations Human Rights Council, it was demanded that the gross violation of human rights in Balochistan needs immediate attention and intervention from the international community.
We would like to draw the Council’s attention to arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances of Baloch political activists, leaders, students, doctors, intellectuals, writers, and human rights defenders. They are being picked up by security forces or their proxy death squads and kept incommunicado for years. As a result of this practice, thousands of Baloch remain missing. Tortured bodies of thousands have been found.
We are profoundly grateful to UN working group on Enforced and Involuntary disappearances for comprehensively raising the issue of forced abduction of Sindhis through a joint communication in March this year. Despite this, disappearances of Sindhi political and human rights activists by Pakistani secret agencies continue unabated. In the month of August alone more than 10 prominent political workers and human rights activists including Insaf Dayo, Ayoub Kandhro, Suhail Raza Bhatti, Zakir Sahito, Kashif Tagar have been abducted.