Balochistan unrest: JWP chief not expecting much from UN team

Balochistan National Party urges UN panel to act and stop rights abuse in the province.

QUETTA:

The Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP) on Sunday took a swipe at the United Nations as a self-seeking organisation from whom not much could be expected on the issue of alleged rights abuses in Balochistan, its president Talal Bugti said.

Though the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances has been apprised of the human rights crisis in Balochistan, Talal warned against placing any faith in the international body as it often deploys peacekeepers in those areas where its interest lies.

The delegation of the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances, headed by UN Special Rapporteur on Enforced Disappearances Olivier de Frouville, discussed the issue of missing persons with representatives of various nationalist parties and groups for the second consecutive day on Sunday.

Separate delegations of the Balochistan National Party (BNP), Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP), Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, Hazara Qaumi Jirga and Shia Conference called upon the UN working group at a local hotel in Quetta and presented some reports to the UN body.

“More than 13,000 people are missing in Balochistan. Because the JWP has no access to remote areas, our delegation has presented a list of only 650 missing persons with full details,” said Talal, the son of the slain Baloch tribal chieftain Nawab Akbar Bugti.

UN told to play its part

Unlike the JWP, the Balochistan National Party appears more upbeat on the UN officials’ visit. “We urge the UN and other international human rights organisations to play their due role in ending the violation of human rights in Balochistan, otherwise a worse human tragedy could take place,” said the party’s information secretary Agha Hassan Baloch.

A series of atrocities is under way in Balochistan through a well-knit plan and activists are being eliminated so that nobody could raise a voice against the looting and plundering of resources in the province, he added.

The BNP presented the UN body with a list of 62 leaders who were victims of target killing, including BNP Secretary General Habib Jalib Baloch.

“The number of missing persons in Balochistan is above 14,000. However, BNP could only prepare a list of 1,000 missing persons, including the 480 decomposed bodies recovered from desolate areas in the province, to dispatch to the UN and other international organisations of human rights,” said Baloch.

Baloch pointed out that the gross violation of human rights in the province had begun during the regime of Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf.

A delegation of the Hazara Qaumi Jirga informed the UN working group about the sectarian targeted killings of the Hazara community, saying that the government was not playing its role to prevent such incidents. The jirga urged the UN to exert pressure on the government to ensure the security of people belonging to the Hazara community.

The UN delegation, however, avoided interacting with the media on Sunday.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 17^th, 2012.