Quetta, Jan 6 (IANS) Human rights activist and Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) leader Sammi Deen Baloch has asserted that Pakistan considers the Baloch people not as a population but enemy, a stance reflected in the continuing abuses across the province by the Pakistani authorities.

Taking to X, Sammi said, “The State has a problem with every individual of Baloch origin whose identity is Baloch. Under this mindset, Baloch men, women, youth, elders, and even minor children are being forcibly disappeared or killed. These Baloch-killing policies themselves make it evident that the State has an issue with the very existence of the Baloch, not with their resistance but with their identity.”

“The narrative of terrorism and counter-terrorism is merely a veil, behind which the state provides justification for its Baloch-killing policies and attempts to prove them legitimate before the world. If this were not the case, then under which category of counter-terrorism would the forcible disappearance of unarmed women, pregnant women, and thirteen-year-old children fall?” she questioned.

Sammi noted that when the people of Balochistan speak of Baloch genocide, they are dismissed as false narratives. She added that no greater genocide exists than one that seeks to erase Baloch identity, without any distinction between men, women, elders, and children.

“We have heard that civilised nations, even in states of enmity and war, consider women and children separately, but the misfortune of the Baloch is that the entity that regards them as enemies has neither civilization nor humanity left, and talk of national and international constitutions and laws has become utterly meaningless, because in this country, they are now nothing more than paper claims,” the BYC leader stated, slamming the Pakistani authorities..

Balochistan has been reeling under the endless atrocities at the hands of Pakistani authorities, who facilitate death squads in the region to carry out enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and illegal detentions of Baloch people.

–IANS

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