Report in The Times of India, Mar 15, 2018 at 10:46 IST
NEW DELHI: A host of organizations representing Pakistan’s ethnic minority communities from Balochistan, Sindh and Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir have raised the issue of human rights violations committed by Pakistan at the 37th Session of the UNHRC in Geneva in the last couple of days.
The members of Baloch Republican Party (BRP) accused Pakistan of “looting” the precious natural resources of Balochistan and committing atrocities on its people.
“The precious natural resources of Balochistan are being looted and taken away by the Pakistani state while the Baloch people are forced to live in Stone Age like conditions,” said representative of the BRP to the UNHRC Abdul Nawaz Bugti.
“Whenever the Baloch people demanded their rights from the Pakistani state, the response has always been military operations and massacre by the army,” he added, “300 thousand Baloch have been displaced and 27 thousands have become the victim of enforced disappearances.”
Similar concerns were raised for the people of the Sindh province by the World Sindhi Congress (WSC).
“Want to inform Council about gross human rights violations against Sindhi people by state and security establishment of Pakistan. The Pakistani establishment is ruthlessly crushing any voice and struggle of Sindhi people against China-Pak Economic Corridor (CPEC),” WSC activist Dr Hidayat Bhutto said in Geneva.
Bhutto also alleged that Pakistan, as part of a systematic policy, is driving out Sindhis from the province with designs to convert the community into a minority in their own motherland.
“Cruel loot of resources and occupation of lands of Sindhi people pushing them into perpetual poverty, malnutrition, social injustice, and disease,” Bhutto added.
The Sindhi activist also accused Pakistan of carrying out systematic efforts to spread religious fundamentalism and violence against Sindhi Hindus to coerce them to leave the country and to counter the national movement.
The concerns of Baloch and Sindhi community where also echoed by activists of the United Kashmir People’s National Party (UKPNP), who spoke against the gross human rights violation committed by Islamabad in Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (PoK).
“Our organization is deeply concern over serious human rights violations in PoK and Gilgit Baltistan. The practice of enforced disappearances has increased dramatically security forces continued to act with impunity and are accused of widespread human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, deaths in custody and extrajudicial executions,” UKPNP activist Nasir Aziz Khan said.
Another activist from the party, Jamil Maqsood urged UNHRC to ask Pakistan to revive fundamental rights of the people, abolish all discriminatory laws against political parties, human rights defenders and allow the press to freely function in PoK.
Last Sunday, Pakistani journalist Arif Tauqeer, who now lives in exile in Germany, had spoken on the issue of media freedom in Pakistan in Geneva.
While speaking to ANI on the sidelines of the 37th Session of UNHRC, Tauqeer said that media in Pakistan is not free to report reality.
“The national security in Pakistan is defined by the military itself. Some of the minorities are facing persecution, killings, and abductions in Balochistan, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and PoK. The human rights violations in Pakistan are not reported in mainstream media and that is very disturbing,” he said.https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/at-geneva-forum-a-host-of-pakistanis-speak-of-human-rights-violations/articleshow/63311127.cms
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