British human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has condemned Pakistan’s treatment of the Baloch people in a speech at the United Nations in Geneva.
Speaking last week at a meeting held parallel to the 13th session of the UN Human Rights Council, Tatchell said that despite its recent peace and reconciliation package, the Pakistani government attacking Baloch activists.
“Promises of military de-escalation are contradicted by continued army incursions and air strikes, which have resulted in many civilian casualties, and by the shooting dead of peaceful Baloch protesters, most recently in January this year,” said Tatchell.
“Baloch human rights groups report that the kidnapping and torture of peaceful, lawful Baloch activists continues unchecked,” he added. “Indeed, the Pakistani government has admitted that in 2009 over 1,000 Baloch people were seized by its security forces and disappeared.
“These crimes against humanity are still happening in Balochistan, despite Pakistan’s ostensible transition to democratic government.”
Tatchell accused the Pakistani government of using Punjabi settlers to erode Balochistan’s national identity:
“Just like Israel’s settlement programme on the West Bank, Islamabad has a settler scheme to colonise Balochistan. It is encouraging Punjabis, the largest and dominant ethnic group in Pakistan, to move to the region.
“The aim is to make the Baloch people a minority in their own homeland, as happened to the Native Americans in the US and the Aboriginal people in Australia. This goal has already been achieved in major cities like Quetta, where colonist settlers now predominate.
“Cultural imperialism is another weapon. Punjabi supremacists have imposed an alien language, Urdu, on the Balochi-speaking people. Borrowing from the tactics of the apartheid regime in South Africa, which forced black children to be schooled in Afrikaans, Islamabad has dictated that Urdu is the compulsory language of instruction in Baloch educational institutions.”
He called on Pakistan to allow a UN-supervised referendum to allow the people of Balochistan to determine their own future.
For the full text of the speech, click here, or watch the speech below.
