ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani soldier killed in an attack by a “violent mob” during an ongoing Baloch rights movement has been laid to rest in the country’s southwest, the army’s media wing said on Tuesday, amid mounting tensions between security forces and ethnic Baloch activists protesting against alleged rights abuses in Balochistan.
The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), which advocates for the rights of the ethnic Baloch people, summoned the ‘Baloch Raji Muchi,’ or Baloch National Gathering, in Balochistan’s Gwadar port city on Sunday against alleged human rights abuses, extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances in Balochistan that rights activists and the families of victims blame on Pakistani security forces. The government and security agencies deny involvement.
Tensions in the province soared on Saturday when more than a dozen protesters, enroute to Gwadar for Sunday’s public gathering, were injured in clashes with security forces in the Mastung district, officials and protesters said. The clashes took place amid a shutdown of Internet, mobile phone and broadband services in parts of Balochistan. Gulzar Dost Baloch, a BYC member who was leading a caravan in Quetta, said supporters were leaving Mastung for Gwadar when “security forces attacked the buses with straight gun fire.” The BYC says one protester was killed in the clashes.
The army’s media wing said on Monday that a Pakistani sepoy and 16 others, including an officer, were injured in “unprovoked assaults” during the clashes.
“Sepoy Sher Baloch, 30, a resident of district Nasirabad in Balochistan, embraced martyrdom,” the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a statement. “Funeral prayers of the martyr have been offered.”
The army said Balochistan Home Minister Mir Zia Langove, officers of the Pakistan Army and civil service attended the funeral prayers.
“After the funeral, the martyr’s remains were dispatched to his native region where he was buried with full military honors,” the ISPR said.
The BYC on Monday responded to allegations it had carried out unprovoked attacks, saying that the army and paramilitary FC soldiers had “launched another brutal and violent attack on the peaceful Baloch National Gathering sit-in in Gwadar.” The group said they were firing “indiscriminately upon peaceful protesters.”
“FOREIGN HAND“
Pakistan’s Balochistan province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, is the site of a low-level insurgency for the last two decades by separatists who say they are fighting what they see as the unfair exploitation of the province’s wealth by the federation. The Pakistani state denies the allegation and says it works for the uplift of the impoverished province. The government and army have often blamed neighbors India, Afghanistan and Iran of stoking tensions in Balochistan and funding the insurgency, which they deny.
On Friday, authorities blocked all entry and exit points of the provincial capital of Quetta, and imposed Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, that prohibits the assembly of four or more people, in parts of the province as BYC supporters attempted to leave for the Gwadar protest, which is being led by activist Dr. Mahrang Baloch. Protesters subsequently staged sit-ins on key highways in Quetta, Mastung, Kech, and Turbat districts.
On Monday, the BYC gave the provincial government 48 hours to release all its detained members or else it would expand its ongoing protests, now in their fourth day, across Balochistan.
“If the government doesn’t accept our demands, we will expand our protests across Balochistan,” Beberg Baloch, a BYC leader who is leading the protests in Mastung, told Arab News on Monday, adding that the group wanted all its arrested members released within 48 hours and provincial highways opened so people could move freely to protest sites.
Deputy Commissioner Quetta Saad Bin Asad said on Monday 22 people had been arrested in the provincial capital as they were disrupting traffic by blocking a main road.
Gwadar, situated along the Arabian Sea, lies at the heart of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CEPC), under which Beijing has funneled tens of billions of dollars into massive transport, energy and infrastructure projects in Pakistan. But the undertaking has been hit by Islamabad struggling to keep up its financial obligations as well as attacks on Chinese targets by militants in Balochistan and elsewhere in the country.
Langove said the latest protests were a “conspiracy” against CPEC, alleging a “foreign hand” in instigating the protests.
“Despite being attacked by the protesters, people of Balochistan, police, and security forces have shown restraint to maintain peace,” Langove told Arab News.
