This handout photograph released on April 11, 2015, by PID shows Chief Minister of Balochistan Abdul Malik Baloch (centre R) and other government officials carrying the body of a construction worker who was killed in an attack by gunmen in Turbat. PHOTO: AFP
Yet again there is an incident of mass killing in Balochistan. There are 20 dead and three injured, all labourers, whose only mistake was to seek work in order to support their families. Reports suggest that 16 were from Punjab and four from Sindh. As ever their attackers got away on motorbikes, fleeing into the darkness and the impunity that accompanies virtually every similar attack. One report says that the men were lined up and their identities verified before they were shot. Another report says that the police clashed with the assailants, and yet another said that the levies who were supposed to protect them “failed to resist” — a telling comment if found to be true.
There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but the local District Police Officer (DPO) speculated that it was “a targeted killing”. What he means is that a group of innocent and poor men were killed for no other reason than their ethnic origins lying outside of Balochistan. The attack was designed to intimidate and terrorise, nothing else, and achieved nothing beyond the wave of grief emanating from the families of the murdered men. As usual, there is to be a “high-level meeting” to discuss the killings and the victims’ families will be awarded Rs1 million apiece — none of which does anything to actually address the issue of ethnic killings in Balochistan.
The killing of simple labourers is almost a routine event. Eight were kidnapped at a poultry farm near Hub in October last year and were found murdered soon after. A survivor of that set of killings said that as with this most recent case, those selected to die died because of their ethnic origins. Two of the group that were kidnapped were from Lasbela district and that saved their lives. Quite apart from innocent labourers, equally innocent doctors and teachers and other academics having an origin outside Balochistan are repeatedly targeted, and ethnic minorities are steadily being driven out of Balochistan. The government has no writ, and it is time to stop pretending that it does.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 12th, 2015.
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