New York: Awareness campaign launched over human rights violation in Balochistan during UNGA

The World Baloch Organisation (WBO) has launched an awareness campaign in New York City to highlight the alarming human rights violation in Balochistan. This comes as world leaders gather in the city to attend the annual United Nations General Assembly session.

As part of the campaign, mobile billboards are being driven around the United Nations headquarters, with messages like "United Nations help end human rights abuses in Balochistan" urging world leaders to help end the human rights abuses inflicted on the people of Balochistan.

The billboards also displayed messages such as Baloch Lives also matter, Justice for Balochistan and UN must help recover missing people in Balochistan, highlighting the grave issue of enforced disappearances in Balochistan, where thousands have been forcibly disappeared by Pakistan's military and its intelligence agencies.

Most of them are extra-judicially killed and their bodies dumped on roadsides bearing signs of extreme torture. Others stay missing forever. Amnesty International has called it the 'Kill and Dump' policy. Victims include activists, teachers, students, doctors, intellectuals and journalists who have voiced their opinions against the military's iron grip over the country. The military's control over the local media is so strong that anyone reporting such incidents is smoked out. International NGOs and journalists are not given access to Balochistan where most of the cases of disappearances are found.

The billboards were also spotted outside the council on foreign relations where Pakistan's Prime minister Imran Khan was present to attend a programme.

According to official Pakistani figures, 5000 people have gone missing over the last ten years after being abducted by the state forces. Unofficial figures put the number much higher, up to 20,000 from Balochistan alone where Pakistani forces have been involved in a continuous military operation to counter the Baloch people's struggle for rights, justice and equality.

Pakistan's ethnic groups and religious minorities like the Baloch, Sindhi, Mohajir, Pashtun, Ahmadiyya, Shia and others are abducted with no information about them provided to their kin.

International groups such as the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have published extensive reports on cases of enforced disappearances and other massive human rights abuses in Balochistan. The reports term the enforced disappearances and extrajudicial murders as the 'Kill and Dump' policy by the Pakistani forces.

The organisers of the campaign have long been engaged in efforts to highlight the worsening human rights situation in Balochistan at international platforms, organising events around Europe and in the United States and focusing on advocacy activities in the European Parliament, the US parliamentary houses, and the United Nations.