Praising Modi for raising Baloch issue increases responsibility, says defence expert

A defence expert has said that the praise showered on Prime Minister Narendra Modi by activists of the Baloch Republican Party (BRP) and their move to hold up his pictures and wave Indian flags in their territory, increases India's responsibility towards realising the goal of delivering freedom to the people of Balochistan.

M M Khajuria told ANI that the Baloch people expect Prime Minister Modi and the Indian media to lend them a helping hand and support their cause internationally.

"They have come out into the open to resist and declare that they appreciate what the Prime Minister of India and the Indian media is doing for them, and they expect them to lend them a helping hand and support their cause in the world forum. This, in fact, increases our (India's) responsibility towards the freedom movement in Balochistan, and, I think, India must devise ways and means of coming up to their expectations," Khajuria added.

While the protests have been going on for the past few days in several locations in Balochistan, protesters in Dera Bugti held up pictures of the Indian Prime Minister, late Baloch leader Akbar Bugti and his grandson Brahumdagh Bugti, and raised slogans against Islamabad. They also burnt Pakistan's national flag.

Slogans were also raised against Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Sanaullah Khan Zehri for declaring Bugti a traitor and thanking the Indian Prime Minister for highlighting the atrocities meted out to the people in the region by Islamabad.

Stating that the freedom movement in Balochistan seemed to have got a fillip after the Indian Prime Minister's reference, Khajuria said, "The kind of acceptance of reality that the people of Balochistan are fighting for their freedom, this is the recognition of the support that the people of Balochistan expect from India, the international forum as well, in awakening world opinion about what they are going through and what they have gone through since 2002."

On the United States State Department's expression of concern over human rights violation in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), Khajuria said that Washington has been forced into doing so after India raised the issue.

The Prime Minister, in his concluding remarks at a recently held all-party meeting to discuss the flare-up in Kashmir in the wake of the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani, had said "Pakistan forgets that it rains bombs from fighter planes on citizens of its country."

"Time has now come that Pakistan will have to answer to the world about the atrocities being committed on people in Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir," he added.

During nation's 70th Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Modi signalled a distinct hardening of posture against Pakistan, by raising human rights violations in Balochistan and PoK.

Prime Minister Modi said the people of PoK and Balochistan had thanked him for flagging the human rights abuses by Pakistan's security forces.

The Prime Minister's comments were criticised as "crossing a red line" by the Pakistan Government, a charge New Delhi has rejected.