Interfaith International

Human Rights Council 11th Session

Item Agenda: 4, General Debate

Intervention: By Mehran Baluch

Dated: 8th June 2009 

Mr. Chairman, 

Baluchistan was a sovereign independent nation which was forcibly occupied in 1948 by neighboring Pakistan. Since occupation the Baluch have been struggling for their national liberation. However the occupying power has used every method to enslave the Baluch, exploit and plunder Baluchistan ’s resources in order to sustain - “the occupying Nation”.   

Mr. Chairman, 

The level of international deception by the occupying power is not only regrettable but extremely shameful. I say this because it presents itself in the international community as a strategically important and viable nation where as it’s neither without Baluchistan’s landmass and its resources.   

Mr. Chairman, 

The occupying power frequently boasts about its strategic position in South Asia. But what strategic importance does Punjab province have? Not much, because they are land locked, over populated and without any significant natural resources. 

Mr. Chairman, 

The world has to acknowledge that the occupying power has been deceitfully marketing it self and its importance internationally only on Baluchistans expense.

Almost the entire cost line of Pakistan is Baluchistan.

Resources such as  gas, coal, gold and other natural minerals produced in Baluchistan is looted and plundered by Punjabi Pakistan. Almost 50% of Pakistan’s land is Baluchistan.  

Mr. Chairman, 

It is interesting to see that occupying power portrays us as anti-islam to its own people where as it portrays us as Islamic fundamentalists to the west.  

Mr. Chairman, 

The continued subjugation and oppression of the Baluch by the occupiers for over 63 years of occupation has brought even the weakest Baluch to the conclusion that national liberation of Baluchistan is the final solution.   

The occupying Government has enjoyed a free hand in Baluchistan where it has carried out 5 major military operations over 6 decades, killed tens of thousands, abducted and tortured thousands, Yet it remains champion of Islam and advocate of human rights. 

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Mr. Chairman, 

I was the first person to bring the case of gross human rights violations committed in Baluchistan by the occupying Pakistani Army, ISI and the establishment to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in 2001.

Pakistan has tried to silence me by registering false criminal cases against me and my family. Pakistan through its notorious ISI has intensified an extensive propaganda campaign against Baluch human rights defenders worldwide. 

They have gone as far as threatening the Head of NGO that accredits me, presented false Interpol papers to international governments, tried to blackmail the British into extraditing me to Pakistan , as well as requesting the Swiss authorities on a number of occasions to arrest me on the false basis of terrorism.   

Mr. Chairman, 

The Pakistani establishment is doing its best to break the will of the Baloch for freedom and human rights but it is unstoppable, therefore it is promoting the policy of divide and rule with the promise of autonomy for the Baluch through its so-called democratic government and its agents, in order to disillusion the Baluch nation and the international community into believing that Pakistan is sincere in resolving the Baluch conflict.         

The struggle of liberty over oppression is the struggle of memory over forgetting.  And we have not forgotten that once we were free.