ISLAMABAD: The organizers decided to wind up the protest camp of Baloch women in Islamabad today (Wednesday).

The event at the camp on Tuesday at which its leader Mahrang Baloch announced its winding up was also attended by the secretary general of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and Council members Nasreen Azhar, Sadia Bukhari, Nasir Zaidi, and Chief of the Human Rights Cell of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Farhatullah Babar.

While addressing at the protest, Babar said the decision by the organisers to wind up the 60-day-long protest camp in Islamabad of Baloch women and children against enforced disappearances, extra-judicial killings and death squads in the province is wise and welcomed for having achieved the purpose for which it was set up.

Baloch protesters’ march ‘a ray of hope’ : PPP

While hailing the decision of the organisers to wind up the protest camp of Baloch women in Islamabad, he said when hundreds of peaceful and unarmed Baloch women set out on the long march from Turbat on November 23 last year, they did not expect to secure the immediate release of all those disappeared nor hoped to bring to justice the criminals behind the crime.

“These protesting women only wanted that their voice reverberated throughout the country and abroad. Despite curbs on sections of mainstream media, that objective has been more than achieved thanks to the social media, the rights defenders and public spirited citizens,” he stated.

He said, “The Baloch women’s march has demonstrated that with determination and rightness of the cause even unarmed and peaceful women from distant Turbat can defy all odds and resist state oppression. This new normal will lend impetus to the struggle of all oppressed people against tyranny and oppression.”

Babar said the 1,500km long march, the 60 days of Dharna and the state’s complete indifference to it has also brought into focus once again how the powers that be contemptuously disregard the genuine concerns of the people.

Such disregard for the foremost issue of Balochistan will only further widen the gulf between the state and the citizens in that province, he said.

“Since 9/11 enforced disappearances have been institutionalized as admitted by General Musharraf in his memoirs that hundreds of people were handed over to the CIA in return for millions of dollars,” he said.

He said that the Supreme Court in its verdict on December 10, 2013, in the case of disappearance of 35 persons from Malakand Internment Centre has identified the people behind it. Yet the Commission of Enforced Disappearance has utterly failed in prosecuting a single perpetrator of the crime, he claimed.

“The institutionalisation of the impunity of the crime is frightening and must end,” he claimed.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024