Fourteen years ago, on April 3, 2009, in Turbat, Baloch National Movement Chairman Ghulam Muhammad Baloch, BNM leader and Baloch National Front Secretary General Lala Munir Baloch, and the Baloch Republican Party leader Sher Mohammad Baloch were forcibly disappeared from the chamber of former opposition leader of Balochistan Assembly, Kachkul Ali Advocate. The mutilated bodies of all three leaders were found on April 9th from Murgaap, a few kilometers from Turbat.
During the People’s Party’s rule, along with the forced disappearances and murders of Baloch leaders, a series of forced disappearances of leaders and workers associated with the freedom struggle began. Later, their mutilated bodies were found in the deserts and roadsides. Governments changed in Pakistan, but the situation in Balochistan worsened instead of improving. Political parties and institutions associated with the Baloch independence movement were forcibly restricted, which continues in various forms to this date.
When political parties in Pakistan are in the opposition, they indicate negotiations with institutions associated with the Baloch freedom struggle and admit the atrocities committed against the Baloch nation.
Before the People’s Party came to power in Balochistan in 2008, the said political party attributed the killing of Akbar Khan Bugti and hundreds of Baloch people, the military operation in Dera Bugti and Kohistan Marri, and the enforced disappearance of thousands of people to the military dictatorship led by General Pervez Musharraf.
Leaders of the Pakistan People’s Party used to express the beginning of reconciliation in Balochistan and started the so-called process by announcing the Balochistan Rights Package. They said that constitutional, political, and economic rights would be available to the people of Balochistan. However, after the targeted killing of Baloch leaders and forced disappearances of political workers, the practice of dumping mutilated bodies of forcibly disappeared people was commenced during People’s Party rule, which has continued during the regime of Tehreek-e-Insaf and Muslim League.
Various governments and establishments of Pakistan are continuously expressing reconciliation with the Baloch nation. However, they are blocking the ways of reconciliation by killing and forcibly disappearing Baloch activists and leaders, and banning politics in Balochistan. The ruling forces of Pakistan must now understand that they cannot end the Baloch national independence movement by force or coercion. They must seriously negotiate to resolve the Baloch problem.