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| Now Pakistan Army targets Sindhis | | 
By Farooq Ganderbali
In Pakistan, the citizens are trapped between brutal terrorist groups and a state which adopts terrorist methods to subjugate them. Terrorists are targeting Shias, Ahmadis, Christians, Hindus, women, children and any one who dared to oppose them. The state is doing the same, with equal ruthlessness.
For decades, the proud Baloch people have been bearing the brunt of the state repression. Hundreds of Baloch men and women have ``disappeared`` over the years and their mutilated bodies appearing on road sides and ditches. The Baloch people have been hounded by both the civilian and military leaders for long. The Baloch merely want to be acknowledged as part of Pakistan and not as outsiders. They want a share in the development, a small pie of the revenues Islamabad gets from the gas fields of Balochistan. The Punjabi-domianted state is not keen on doing so. It has viewed Baloch people with extreme suspicion and they have often accused the Baloch of being sympathetic to India. The result has been brutal military campaigns against the Baloch since 1947.
The brutality reached its perverted heights during Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s regime and when Musharraf took over the country in October 1999. During Musharraf’s regime, a Baloch woman was raped in Sui by an Army doctor and the military regime refused to punish the guilty doctor. Instead, the army left no stone unturned to harass the victim. When the community rose up in arms against this, the military dictator ordered a military attack on the veteran Baloch leader, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti. The Bugti leader and his men, all patriot Pakistanis, were hunted down and killed by combat jets and artillery guns. Their houses were destroyed and their women and children forced to flee their home and hearth.
Since then, a few thousand men and women have disappeared—abducted, tortured and thrown into dungeons by the army. When their kith and kin sought the help of the courts, the army left their bodies in market places and road side pits. The bodies bore marks of severe torture. Others, in hundreds, remain ``missing``.
The Shias are being similarly targeted in different parts of Pakistan. The reason is different here—the state is suspicious of their Shia citizens. The state wants to be a fully Sunni state and therefore has no place for Shias in the scheme. The minorities face even more repressive measures. In all, hundreds of Shias have been targeted over the years with no one really raising a squeak of protest. Not like the one heard after the Peshawar attack.
Now Sindhi men are the new targets of the military. Their fault: long ago, some of their elders had dreamt of a Sindhi nation. But that was long ago and the movement was suppressed with brutality. The present generation of Sindhis is as much a Pakistani as the other ethnic members of the Muslim country. But the state remains suspicious. As a result, any Sindhi who is remotely involved in any activism finds himself becoming part of the mounting number of “enforced disappearances”. Many of them are killed after torture in secret prisons by the army. Sindhi activists put the number of such abductions and torture deaths since 2002 to be over 6000.
In 2014, 15 Sindhi political activists disappeared without a trace. Of which, 11 reappeared, tortured and killed and their bodies thrown by the road side. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in December 2014 expressed ``grave alarm`` at the rising number of Sindhis disappearing and ``with the victims turning up dead``. The commission noted that ``those taken away are young men, mainly political activists, picked up from various parts of the province in the last few months. Mutilated dead bodies of many of the victims have been found``.
The commission, in its statement, also gives details of the persons gone missing and found tortured to death. For example, Shakeel Sindhi, a Sindh University student, went missing from his house in Karachi on October 6 and his body was found five days later. No one knows why he was killed. Likewise, Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaz (JSMM) activist Paryal Shah was forcibly taken down from a public transport bus headed from Dahrki to Kashmor on November 7 and his mutilated body was found the same day on the Sindh-Punjab border. Five days later, a bullet-riddled body of Roshan Brohi of Larkana was stuffed in a gunny bag in Karachi. He was picked up on October 26. Another Sindh university student, Asif Panhwar’s body was found with several bullet wounds. He had been missing since August 15. Another first-year student, Allah Wadio, met the same brutal fate—he was abducted on August 13 and he was thrown out of a vehicle in a badly injured condition on December 2. His parents took him to the civil hospital from where the security agencies took him away and his body was found dumped.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan blames these disappearances and killings on the security forces, in other words the army and para-military forces. In a statement, the commission said:
“In several cases the involvement of security forces’ personnel has been established by witnesses while in some their role has been actively suspected...it is deplorable when any state starts abducting its citizens``. Lawmakers too have raised their voice against such killings. The leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly warned of creating a Baloch-like situation in Sindh.
(Opinions expressed in write-ups/articles/Letters are the sole responsibility of the authors and they may not represent the scoopnews.in)
Editor, Scoop News
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