On Saturday, social media was rife with rumours that Dr. Allah Nazar Baloch, a veteran leader of the Balochistan insurgency has been killed along with 15 others in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Social media accounts, most of them leaning towards the Pakistani establishment, were peddling the claims that Balochistan Liberation Front or BLF’s leader is no more.
BLF spokesperson Gohram Baloch denied these claims in a media statement, saying that the “social media trolls” of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence are behind these rumours.
He said that circulating such baseless propaganda is the hallmark of Pakistan’s “slave media.” He said that by propagating such rumours, the Pakistani authorities are trying to level the blame on Afghanistan and India. He said that the authorities accuse India of financing a “proxy war” in Balochistan against the Pakistani state. By these tactics, they want to delegitimize the Baloch struggle and justify their war crimes and human rights abuses in Balochistan, he said.
Gohram Baloch said that Pakistan wants to divert attention from its dirty work in Balochistan.