The weak hands of justice

Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur
I had expressed fears last week in my piece ‘Taking cognizance’ (Daily Times, February 12, 2012) that the US Congressional hearing could have “adverse consequences for the Baloch” as Pakistan, “just to show to the US that it does not care for what its committees say or do, it will increase the atrocities and human rights abuses against the Baloch”. Sadly, it is becoming a brutal reality. A day after the Congressional hearing, the mutilated body of missing Baloch Republican Party (BRP) leader Sangat Sana, a former Chairman of the Baloch Students Organisation (BSO Azad), abducted from Kolpur on December 8, 2008, was found dumped near Turbat. He had been shot 30 times in the face and chest.
Could this be a prelude to the Iranian-like 1988 hangings of Mujahideen-e-Khalq and other imprisoned dissidents in revenge for the Mujahideen-e-Khalq attacks? Amnesty International had put that figure, including women, at around 4,500. Here Zakir Majeed and hundreds others are missing. The signs are ominous.
Haji Jan Mohammad Marri, an elder of the Sherani clan, was abducted from Karachi on the 10th this month and his body was found in Windar on the 13th. He had previously undergone a two-year detention following arrest in 2005. I knew him well as we lived together in exile in Afghanistan. The government seems determined to spite the US at the cost of Baloch blood.
Hafiz Abdul Qadir Ghulamani Mengal, father of Mir Sami Mengal Shaheed, was shot dead in Khuzdar on Thursday. Mir Sami Mengal Shaheed had been abducted on October 1, 2010 and his body was found 28 days later near Khuzdar on Eid-ul-Azha. A note in his pocket contained derogatory remarks against the Baloch leaders and organisations and said this was an eid gift for the Baloch. How many more Baloch lives will they take before realising that the Baloch spirit cannot be broken?
People often wonder why these agencies and their henchmen invite condemnation and ire by displaying abducted persons’ brutally tortured dead bodies. There is a very simple bully’s logic behind it: instilling fear in the hearts of those who dare to fight for Baloch rights. Secondly, they know they can commit these crimes with impunity.
Bullies always measure the resilience of the people according to their own psyche; they presume that atrocities will cow people into submission. During the Vietnam War the US dropped 7,078,032 tonnes of bombs, which was 3-1/2 times the World War II bomb tonnage and averaged 1,000 lbs for every Vietnamese man, woman and child.
Moreover, 10 percent of Vietnam was intensively sprayed with 72 million litres of chemicals — 66 percent of it was Agent Orange, which contains TCCD dioxin and seeped into the soil and water supply and consequently into the food chain, and was then passed from the mother to her foetus. The dioxins endure in the soil and continue damaging the health of the grandchildren of the war’s victims. Since the war the Vietnamese Red Cross has registered an estimated one million people disabled by Agent Orange.
Between 1962 and 1969, 688,000 agricultural acres were sprayed with chemical Agent Blue; the aim was to deny food to the NLF but it was the civilian population who suffered most from the poor rice harvests. A 2003 report claimed that 650,000 people in Vietnam were still suffering from chronic conditions and an estimated 500,000 people had died from health problems created as a result of the chemicals.
An estimated three million people were killed by the war and over one million wounded. Yet the US lost the war and the Vietnamese triumphed so these tactics fail in the face of the resilience of people and these atrocities here will not break the spirit of the Baloch people.>>> More