Helping survivors: Civilian oversight of relief activities in quake-hit areas demanded

AWP alleges military is preventing civilian organisations from accessing affected areas.

ISLAMABAD:

The Awami Workers Party (AWP) has demanded civilian oversight of relief and rehabilitation work in earthquake-hit areas of Awaran Balochistan.

About two dozen protesters belonging to the AWP gathered outside the Islamabad Press Club to show solidarity with the earthquake victims.

“They don’t want cantonments but doctors,” chanted the protesters.

The 7.6-magnitude earthquake had killed over 300 and destroyed property in Awaran Balochistan recently.

The AWP workers alleged that the military was preventing civilian organisations from accessing the affected areas for carrying out the relief work.

They questioned the relief and rehabilitation response of the military, alleging that the military was trying to build a new cantonment in the Maskhay tehsil of Awaran to increase military presence there instead of helping the survivors.

The demonstrators said that Balochistan has faced systemic oppression from state institutions over the past six decades and the slow post-quake relief work was a continuation of that historical apathy.

The AWP workers demanded that civil institutions be given charge of relief activities and relief teams from different national and international humanitarian relief agencies be allowed to visit the affected areas.

AWP Secretary-General Aasim Sajjad Akhtar alleged that the information out of Awaran was being strictly controlled by the military and journalists were not free to report on the state of the quake survivors.

He said while civilians were being stopped from visiting the earthquake-affected areas, the establishment’s ‘pet organisations’ and some banned outfits were being allowed to operate in the area.

Afsheen Baloch, a teacher in Islamabad, who hailed from Quetta, said that it was time the military showed good will gesture to the people of Balochistan to secure their trust.

AWP member and rights activist Farzana Bari said that the rescue and relief work was a ‘complete mess’ and that the army’s undue intervention was simply ‘condemnable’.

“But not helping the earthquake survivors in the time of their need would give rise to resentment,” Bari said. “Their sense of alienation will grow if the state does not respond now.”

As the AWP protesters demanded civilian oversight of the relief efforts, Muhammad Sadiq Butt, a survivor of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, who claimed he has not received relief in eight years and who has set up his own protest banner in front of the press club, his plight is a dark reminder of the hardship hundreds of affected people in Balochistan might be going through right now.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2013.