Pakistan - Balochistan exodus

Successive regimes in Pakistan have failed to deliver the promised peace to the troubled province of Balochistan. It appears that the PML-N too is treading the same path as in the National Assembly (NA) the other day, government lawmakers instead of addressing the problem, started disputing the figure of a mass exodus from Balochistan that was presented by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in a report almost two months ago. HRCP in its report stated the number of people that have left Balochistan over the past decade is around 300,000. According to the report, 200,000 of them belonged to Hazara community, 90,000 to the Urdu and Punjabi speaking community, while the rest were from the Hindu, Parsi and Zikri communities. Owing to the perceived consistent threat to their lives, these people have relocated to elsewhere in the country or abroad. As the numbers clearly suggest, it is mainly the religious minorities that are under attack and are escaping persecution. Members of the opposition brought this issue into the NA and sought a reply from the government. However, our patronising ruling party legislators diverted the discussion into merely questioning the credibility of the figures. According to their sources, i.e. the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA), the actual number lies somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000. One of the PML-N lawmakers even claimed that the report is trying to give an ethnic hue to the issue.

Need it be reminded that the HRCP is a respected and credible organisation, which since its inception has contributed weightily to the betterment of Pakistan by highlighting issues that may have slipped under the radar? Rather than appreciating HRCP’s efforts in gathering this data and that too of a troubled province where few want to step foot, they are denigrating it on the grounds that it is exaggerated and divorced from reality. As a matter of fact it is shameful for the governments that have come and gone during the past decade that they could not monitor what sort of transformation the province is going through as a result of ongoing atrocities. Even if one assumes for a moment that the statistics that the government is quoting are true, who is not aware of the sectarian and religious violence perpetrated by fundamentalist and extremist groups in the province and how the security agencies are trying to subjugate the nationalist insurgency by adopting the strategy of enforced disappearances and the notorious kill-and-dump policy? And how does the report give the issue an ethnic hue when the facts suggest quite the opposite, since the bulk of the victims are religious minorities? Clearly, just to exculpate itself, the government is hiding its head ostrich-like in the sand rather than responsibly probing the alarming trends highlighted by the HRCP report.