Baloch National Movement, a political party in Balochistan, has said that at least fifteen including two sons of one of its leaders have been forcibly disappeared.
In a statement, The Baloch National Movement said 15 persons, including two sons of a senior BNM official, have been forcibly disappeared in the past few days in Balochistan. The statement said that the policy of “collective punishment” is not only continuing untempered but also gaining momentum in Balochistan.
BNM said that the Pakistani forces “abducted” the two sons of Dr. Khuda Bux Baloch, a member of the central committee of the BNM, from Baghbana on Wednesday.
The organisation’s spokesperson said that the two brothers – Nisar Ahmed and Abdul Waheed – were detained due to their father’s affiliation with the Baloch National Movement. Waheed had also been detained back in 2018. “On one hand, the state ostensibly assures the families of the Baloch missing persons that their loved ones will be safely released, but on the other hand, it is abducting and incarcerating people en masse,” BNM’s spokesperson alleged.
According to local sources, Waheed was suffering from severe health conditions due to torture suffered during his first detention. During last night’s raid, Pakistani forces not only detained the two brothers but allegedly took the valuables, including cash and gold, from their house. The security forces remained in the area for more than three hours, searching many houses.
BNM’s statement alleged that a large-scale military operation also has begun in the Soorgar area of Jhao, an administrative subdivision of district Awaran. The spokesperson said that the Pakistani security forces have targeted innocent civilians, seized their possessions and “forcibly disappeared” people during the operation.
The spokesperson further said that the “oppressive” Pakistani state has converted Balochistan into a “large-scale open-air torture cell” where frequent military operations and flagrant human rights violations have become the new normal. He alleged that the so-called ‘democratic governments’ have only intensified these “brutalities.” If international organizations do not speak up for Balochistan, the situation would reach such a critical stage that it would be impossible to put an end to it, he concluded.