Balochistan: Military abduct eight, seals villages for weeks, continues operations

Most cases of enforced disappearance and extra judicial killing in Balochistan are going unnoticed due to the media blackout and prohibition to access of rights organizations.

Military operations are continued for more than a week in Bolan and Awaran areas of Balochistan. Communication networks are jammed, no one allowed to visit the hit areas. Many reports of dozens killings during the operations emerged in social media, but none was confirmed yet, which increases the concerns for the security of people of the area.

We have received nine more reports of enforced disappearances from two districts in Makran division of Balochistan. The Mekran division hosts the Gwadar deep-sea port, a port which is being built by Islamabad government with a huge collaboration of China, without the consent of the locals there.

According to reports, On 26 January 2018, security forces abducted Chakar Murad and his brother Gul Dad, residents of Jamak, Gwarkop area of district Kech, from Hub district Lasbela, an industrial town, which is administratively a part of Balochistan but mainly connected with Karachi city of Sindh, where recently more than a dozen of Balochistan’s students were picked up by security forces including 9 years old Aftab in October 2017. All of them are still missing.

On 25 January 2018, the forces abducted Raz Muhammad from his home village Resh-Pesh, Parom district Panjgur.
On 24 January 2018, forces raided a house in Mondi area of district Gwadar and abducted Aziz Ashraf, resident of Kumbel, Dasht district Kech.

On 23 January 2018, personnel of intelligence agencies reportedly whisked away Sajid Wahid, resident of Kohad, Tump district Kech.

On the same day, forces raided Resh-Pesh area of Parom district Panjgur and abducted a Noor Jan Dost Mohammad.

On 21 January 2018, on the third day of the military operation conducted in several villages of Pidark, district Kech, the security forces abducted Dr. Akhter Dilbod and Chakar Vashdil from their villages, Sari Kallag and Pidark.

Neither the whereabouts of the abductees are known to their families nor they were produced before a court of law.

Many of the forcibly disappeared persons have been later found dead in Balochistan, which concerns the family of every disappeared person most.

Human Rights Council of Balochistan (Hakkpaan) is a non-profit and non-partisan human rights group based in Balochistan and Sweden. It collects reports from Balochistan, a region Pakistan government does not allow any media and HR group to visit and report. Human rights violations in Balochistan is not a new phenomenon, but it got its worst levels after the Military coup de tat of Pakistan in 1999. Thousands of Baloch have been reported missing, hundreds killed in fake encounters and so-called kill and dump policy of the military. HRCB collects the data from Balochistan itself, through its network of volunteers and supporters, organizes and reports them to the human rights mechanisms of the world.