Balochistan Liberation Movement(BLM), a pro-independence organization in Balochistan, has released a statement saying, “Baloch people remember 28 May as one of the darkest days of their history and one of the worst days for Baloch national slavery. In this particular day Pakistan tested Atomic bombs in Balochistan, and initiated a new series of problems for Baloch nation”.
‘Where the Nuclear tests were conducted by Pakistan army in the Raaskoh range and Chagai district of Balochistan on 28th May 1998, against the wishes and without the consent of Baloch people’.
‘The 40 million people of Balochistan after the forcibly annexation on the barrel of the gun into Pakistan on 27 March 1948, Balochistan has been in a state of intermittent conflict ever since, the current conflict between Pakistan and Balochistan has been evolving since 2002, with many injustices including extra judicial killings of Baloch youths’ statement read.
Brad Adams from Human Rights Watch, who was monitoring the situation in 2011, conveyed that ” Pakistani security services are brazenly disappearing, torturing, and often killing Baloch people, because of suspected ties to the Baloch nationalist movement… The national government has done little to end the carnage in Balochistan, calling into question its willingness or ability to control the military and intelligence agencies.”
Statement further says, “as a result of Pakistan’s nuclear tests in 1998, children are born with genetic problems such as facial deformities, eye problems, skin diseases, and limb dysfunction. The generation of Chagai in Balochistan have developed genetic abnormalities”.
‘The impacts of the residual radiation which has dawdled over Chagai- cases of lung, liver, and blood cancer, skin diseases, typhoid, and infectious hepatitis, as well as serious effects on the nervous system, blood pressure, eyes and throats, and on new born babies- the tests also impacted the environment’.
‘This has caused a series of damage to the flora and fauna of the area thus resulting to the radioactive effect to every level of ecosystem and hence affecting the human beings who inhabited there’.
‘Due to nuclear tests conducted by Pakistan, the radioactivity has gone into the very soil of the area and has contaminated the ground water. The people who once inhabited the Chagai, are now migrating for better shelter, where they are treated as enemies only. Out homed from their native land, they are left to live a miserable life’.
The geologists believe that the tests have not only caused a decline in groundwater level but have also contaminated both the surface and ground waters. Other than the fallouts, the suffering of locals are till unescapable as the results of the nuclear explosions and the Baloch inhabitants in the region is plagued with serious diseases stemming from the blasts.
It further says, “after the tests of Pakistan’s dirty nuke, Balochistan experienced a country wide and a massive scale of drought which claimed the lives of millions of livestock. The agriculture sector of the country was badly affected, domestic economy of the people collapsed and many died due to radioactivity”.
‘The blast site is surrounded by Baloch inhabitants and mountains are abode to different species of wild creatures. Hence, along with Baloch people the wild life of Balochistan has also paid a heavy price as a result of Pakistan’s dirty bomb’.
Data retrieved from annual report on Chaghai District by Planning and Development Department, Government of Balochistan shows that the following mountainous creatures continue to suffer after the nuclear test in Chaghai and they’re now becoming extinct.
‘Chaghai continues to burn but the world at large remains silent spectators to the destruction and slow death of Raaskoh’.
‘The Pakistani media to this day is busy praising and boasting about the nuclear tests and Pakistan becoming the first ‘Islamic nation to possess nuclear arms’ but they ignore the effects of these nuclear arms on people of Balochistan. The Pakistani state media has never talked about the dangers that the people of region will are facing because of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. The world media and Human Rights groups also toed the same line because none of the independent international media groups has ever tried to visit Chaghai and witness the ongoing destruction these blasts have caused.’
“It is worth mentioning that a considerable number of Pakistani nuclear weapon deposits are situated in Dalbandin, Chaghai and Kharan districts of occupied Balochistan. Pakistan army’s headquarters in Chaghai and Dalbandin are supervising the nuclear activities deep under the bunkers on the hilly areas of Chaghai and Dalbandin”, statement read.
‘Balochistan being an occupied place has been remained only the option for conducting the arsenal fissile. The destitute people from Balochistan have always stated the aftermath of the nukes that dangerously affected the majority and its neighboring areas, but neither a report gets ever broadcasted nor any concerned expert was allowed to pay a visit to the vicinities. And despite of 28th May explosions now Pakistan following a policy of storing its nukes and warheads in various areas of Balochistan’.
‘The Baloch people feel bitter about their land being used as a hub for the development and export of nuclear weapons. They feel the proliferation of possibly insecure nuclear weapons being supplied to Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia with the apparent tacit acceptance of the West will end up in the hands of religious extremists such as the IS’.
BLM further stated that “an irresponsible state like Pakistan whose army has been training, arming and nurturing religious extremists and Jihadist terrorists for centuries, is not capable of securing its nuclear weapons. Pakistan is a money hungry corrupt state, the chances are high that it will sell its nuclear weapons not only to other extremist countries but also to the Jihadist terrorists who are hell-bent on destroying the world peace”.
‘Pakistan has put atomic weapons on black market and made the entire world over a heap of nuclear weapons, which is even at the reach of religious extremists, because Pakistan used religion extremism as a political tool and trained its army in very line of religious extremism’.
‘Pakistan is a nursery and safe haven for terrorists, Pakistan and its army has created parallel sanctuaries of terrorists, by the dent of these elements Pakistan is spreading terrorism throughout the world. There is full chance that Pakistan army with its proxies put the entire world into a grave disaster’.
“The United Nations and other responsible world bodies must send watchdogs to investigate nuclear radiations and impacts of atomic tests in Chaghai area”, statement read.
BLM has appealed in the statement saying, “The international community and International Atomic Energy Agency must form an independent committee to investigate the level of destruction caused by Pakistan’s atomic bomb in Balochistan and hold Pakistan accountable at the International Criminal Court for committing war crimes in Balochistan.
Pakistan should be stripped off its nuclear weapons, given its friendly relation with Taliban and other extremist groups that operate freely in Pakistan.
The United Nations and world’s peaceful and democratic nations should support the Baloch struggle for national liberation because an Independent Baloch state can play an enormous role in bringing peace in the world and become an obstacle in the way of influx of Pakistan’s sponsored terrorists to Afghanistan and India”.