By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: A group of Baloch activists who marched from Turbat to Islamabad to protest human rights abuses in their province gave the government a seven-day ultimatum on Thursday to address their grievances or face the wrath of the Baloch people.
The protesters, who belong to the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), one of the organizers of the long march and civil society organization, said they had five demands that the government must meet to end the human rights crisis in Balochistan, where a separatist insurgency has been raging for decades.
Dr. Mahrang of BYC said in a press conference the government must fulfill their demand within a week, or they would escalate their movement and appeal to the international community.
The demands include sending a UN fact-finding mission to investigate rights violations in Balochistan, signing an agreement to end enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, releasing all missing persons, banning the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) and “state-sponsored death squads”, and withdrawing fake cases against peaceful protesters.
Dr Baloch said the Ministry of Interior should also admit to the alleged deaths of disappeared persons in staged encounters and issue a public apology and a list of all victims.
The state had shown no sincerity or seriousness in engaging with the protesters, who had faced brutal repression and harassment by the police and the administration since they arrived in the capital on Dec. 20, she added.
“If the state does not hold sincere negotiations on the above demands and does not show seriousness and if the treatment of the past week with protesters continues then after seven days, the movement will express its disappointment with all state institutions against state policies of genocide and treating Balochistan like a colony, and put its case before the Baloch people.”
She added that the Baloch people would then decide the future course of action, implying a possible escalation of the protest movement.
“The decision will be in the court of the Baloch people if the state is not ready to change its colonial mindset.”
The BYC’s press conference came days after hundreds of participants of the long march were detained by the capital police, who later released them in batches.
The long march, which started in Turbat on Dec. 6 after the alleged “extrajudicial killing” of a Baloch youth by CTD officials, covered more than 2,000 kilometers and reached Islamabad on Dec. 20.
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