Turbat massacre: Amidst swoop on traffickers, top official suspended
Authorities in Balochistan have suspended the top administrator a day after the grisly murder of 18 would-be migrants by gunmen in Turbat district by gunmen from a little-known Baloch insurgent group.
The deputy commissioner of Kech district, Aslam Tareen, has been suspended and replaced with Fateh Mohammad Bangar, the additional commissioner of Naseerabad district, according to an official announcement made in Quetta on Saturday.
Tareen was punished for his failure to check illegal human trafficking at the Pakistan-Iran border, it added.
The victims of Friday’s gut-wrenching massacre were trying to travel to Europe via Iran with the help of local smugglers in the hope of finding better jobs there.
Police, meanwhile, swooped on suspected hideouts of human smugglers in Gwadar district. Eight alleged human traffickers were detained – at least one of them is said to have lured the Friday attack victims.
“Police are interrogating the detained men for their involvement in smuggling economic migrants to Europe via Iran,” Sohail Baloch, the deputy commissioner of Gwadar, told The Express Tribune.
Baloch faulted local ‘agents’ for the illegal business and said that without their help, human smugglers from Punjab and other parts of the country could not help their clients traverse the difficult desert route of Dasht.
The detained human smugglers mostly belong to the Dasht plain, a source told The Express Tribune.
The arrests were made shortly after Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani ordered a crackdown on human trafficking rings and their local agents in different areas of Balochistan.
Friday’s sordid killings were ethnically-motivated. A group, identifying itself as Baloch Liberation Tigers (BLT), claimed responsibility and threatened more such attacks on people belonging to Punjab.
Tribal militants have been fighting a low-profile insurgency in the province since long. However, the insurgency became widespread and deadly after the 2006 killing of Baloch chieftain Nawab Akbar Bugti in a military operation.
The Baloch insurgents have been demanding more autonomy and control over natural resources of their province.
Prime Minister’s Adviser on Interior Affairs Rehman Malik, has meanwhile, set a three-day deadline for the Federal Investigation Agency to apprehend all human traffickers. He directed the agency’s chief to submit details of the horrific incident by today (Sunday).
In Quetta, Provincial Home Secretary Naseebullah Bazai said bodies of those killed in Friday’s attack were sent to Karachi, where three of them were identified: two belonged to Gujranwala and the third to Sialkot.
The remaining 15 victims could not be identified. Families have been advised to contact the Edhi Centre in Karachi to identify bodies of their loved ones.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 8th, 2012.
COMMENTS (4)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
1732503274-0/Untitled-design-(43)1732503274-0-405x300.webp "article")
1732501636-0/Untitled-design-(42)1732501636-0-165x106.webp "article")
1732498967-0/Outer-Banks--(1)1732498967-0-165x106.webp "article")
1732086766-0/BeFunky-collage-(74)1732086766-0-165x106.webp "article")
It's not the human smugglers who killed these people from Punjab.The minister should go after the terrorists who are the ones actually responsible for this massacre of Punjabis and what about the Thousands of punjabi civilians murdered in balochistan over the last several year,when will their murderers be brought to justice. All the media outrage and prime time coverage for the missing persons,but no outrage,no media coverage for the lacs of settlers whose lives have been ruined by terrorists who forced them to sell their houses and businesses at throwaway prices and flee Balochistan.No suo moto on this? all the judicial concern is for the missing persons only ? no sympathy for the settlers?
The government as always taking the easy way out.They don't have the courage to go after the ethnic terrorists involved in the ethnic cleansing of Punjabis in Balochistan so they are trying to paint these traffickers as the real villains when it's the ethnic terrorists who killed these travellers from Punjab,the traffickers didn't pull the trigger,they didn't spray unarmed civilians with bullets. The government should summon the courage to go after the real villains of this genocide and not try to find scapegoats to present before the media.
So instead of going after the terrorists who murdered the punjabi passengers,the administration is rounding up the travel agents! Much easier to arrest civilians instead of fighting the armed terrorists killing innocent civilians.Why is the balochistan govt. not making any efforts to capture the terrorists who massacred all these punjabi civilians?