Chakar Qamber produced to session court , two employees of BMC abducted

Quetta: Baloch missing student Chakar Qamber has been produced to a session court in Quetta here on Tuesday. Sources reported that he has been accused of terrorism charges. Balochistan students Organisations term the charges as “fake”. They said Chakar Qamber did not commit any crime and he is a dedicated and hard working student. The students alleged that the IT college administration has complained against Chakar Qambar because he was against the biased policies of the Vice Principal of the college.

The eye-witnesses had said that Chakar Qamber looked very weak and he could not walk properly. He was carried by the police officials while alighting and getting on the police vehicle, this obviously proves that he has suffered gruesome torture at the hands of Pakistani police. Sources said that after the hearing Chakar Qambar was again taken to an unknown location and he was not provided with any medications.

On the other hand illegal abductions continue in Balochistan, two employees of Balochistan Medical College have been “arrested” and “disappeared” while they were on their way to hospital.

According to reports two employees of BMC Mr Manzoor Baloch and Sikander Baloch have been abducted on Tuesday afternoon around 3:00 pm, while they were on their way to hospital to perform their duties. Both the men have been taken to undisclosed locations and their whereabouts remain unknown.

Baloch Students Action Committee, B.M.C., in a statement strongly condemned the abduction of Sikander Baloch and Manzoor Baloch.

Iran hangs 13 Sunni rebels as 'enemies of God'

By Hiedeh Farmani

According to Balochinews.com the Persian State media named the executed Sunni Baloch men as following:
1) Manochar Shah Baksh s/o Akbar
2) Mohammad Hassan Shahozai s/o Shey Mohammad
3) Abdul Rashid Hamidi s/o Hassan
4) Yaqoub Ghamshadzai s/o Alauk
5) Abdul Basit Shehaki s/o Qaim
6) Abdul Qudos Didan Naroi s/o Jumma Khan
7) Abdul Sabor Rakhshan s/o Abdul Ghafoor
8) Abdullah Wafai s/o Jan Mohammad
9) Abdul Khaliq MirBalochzai s/o Haibat
10) Tariq Abadiyan s/o Dad Mohammad
11) Yahya Regi s/o Abdul Wahid
12) Khalil Regi s/o Abdul Latif
13) Adraes Notainzai s/o Ibrahim

TEHRAN (AFP) — In a mass prison execution, Iran hanged 13 rebels from the shadowy Sunni insurgent group Jundallah as "enemies of God" for a string of attacks, including kidnapping of foreigners.

The official IRNA news agency said the insurgents were executed in prison in the restive southeastern border city of Zahedan, epicentre of a Sunni Muslim rebellion against the Shiite regime in Tehran.

"Thirteen members of this group were hanged this morning," provincial judiciary chief Ebrahim Hamidi was quoted as saying.

The rebels were accused of being "mohareb" (enemies of God) and of "kidnapping foreigners, killing innocents and of carrying out terrorist acts for the Jundallah group," IRNA said, quoting a local judiciary statement.

State media had announced on Monday that 14 members of Jundallah (Soldiers of God) would be publicly executed on Tuesday.

"After last minute consultations, the executions were carried out in a prison," Hamidi said.

The media had also reported that Abdolhamid Rigi, brother of Jundallah leader Abdolmalik Rigi, was one of the rebels to be executed. Hamidi said Abdolhamid Rigi was not among those hanged on Tuesday but would be executed later this week.

Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and is home to a sizeable ethnic Baluchi population.

Jundallah has claimed repeated attacks against Iranian government targets in the province which lies on a major trafficking route for narcotics destined for Europe and the Gulf.

In the latest major strike, Jundallah claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on a Shiite mosque in Zahedan in May that killed 25 people, saying it was a revenge attack for the hanging of members of the Baluch minority.

The mass hangings on Tuesday come 10 days after 20 drug traffickers were executed in the town of Karaj, west of Tehran.

It is rare even in Iran, which according to human rights group Amnesty International carried out more executions than any other country apart from China in 2008, to execute such a large number of people in a single day.

In July last year, 29 people convicted of various crimes including murder, rape and drugs trafficking were executed in the largest mass execution in recent years.

Amnesty had urged the Iranian authorities to halt the Jundallah executions, saying the rebels had not received a fair trial.

"The Iranian authorities must abide by their international obligations to uphold human rights and guarantee fair trials, which is all the more essential in death penalty cases," the London-based watchdog's Middle East and North Africa director Malcolm Smart said.

Amnesty said all the accused were believed to have been arrested before the deadly attack on the Zahedan mosque, for which three people were hanged in May.

The latest hangings bring to at least 177 the number of people executed in the Islamic republic so far this year, according to an AFP count based on news reports. In 2008, Iran executed 246 people.

Tehran says the death penalty is a necessary tool for maintaining public security and is only applied after exhaustive judicial proceedings.

Murder, rape, armed robbery, drugs trafficking and adultery are all punishable by death in Iran.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ ... BcBWKEa7eQ?index=0&ned=uk

Iran gives death penalty to 12 Sunni Baloch

Balochistan: Iranian regime has decided to execute 12 Baloch accused of being members of Jundullah (now turned BPRM Baloch Peoples’ Resistance Movement). Abdul Hamid Regi and Molawi Abed Gwahramzahi are among the twelve to be hanged by the end of this week. Name of ten others are not known yet.

"The revolutionary court and the appeals court voted for the execution of 12 members of the Jundullah group over the charge of moharebeh (waging war against God)," ISNA news agency quoted Head of Sistan-Baluchistan judiciary office Ebrahim Hamidi as saying on Saturday.

Past two years the Iranian regime executed or shot dead over 200 Baloch. Sadly the International Human Rights Organisations did not voice any concerned on the gross human right violations in Balochistan.

‘Balochistan conflict gaining ground’

* New York Times report says PPP government has done little to address Baloch grievances

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Three local political leaders were seized from a small legal office from Turbat in April, handcuffed, blindfolded and hustled into a waiting pickup truck in front of their lawyer and neighbouring shopkeepers. Their bodies, riddled with bullets and badly decomposed in the scorching heat, were found in a date palm grove five days later.

The New York Times on Sunday quoted local residents as saying that they were convinced the killings were the work of intelligence agencies. The deaths fuelled an existing insurgency in Balochistan, with nationalists taking to the streets across the province.

Although the level of this building insurgency is not the same as that of the Taliban, the conflict is gradually gaining ground.

Politicians and analysts have warned that the conflict could open another front for the government, which is already engaged with the Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in the north.

Baloch nationalists and several politicians believe the Balochistan situation has the potential to disintegrate the country, unless the government deals with the Baloch anger as a priority.

Thousands of Baloch people were believed to have been rounded up by former president Pervez Musharraf’s regime.

Baloch nationalists maintain the abuses continue under President Asif Ali Zardari and promises to heal tensions stand broken.

“It’s pretty volatile,” said Nawab Zulfiqar Magsi, the governor of Balochistan.

Efforts: Much of the Baloch resentment is a result of years of economic and political negligence. President Zardari had promised to remedy it all, but the Baloch people believe his government has done little in reality to address the grievances.

The Baloch people are becoming increasingly sceptical about the government’s sincerity to deal with their issues.

Sayed Hassan Shah, the provincial minister for Industry and Commerce, said his party was determined to attain provincial autonomy. “This is our last option,” he said. “If we fail, then maybe we have to think of liberation or separation.”

Even Governor Magsi expressed his exasperation at the government’s inaction in addressing the needs of the population.

The First Night of Torture Cell

By Malik Siraj Akbar

“Sometimes when my uncles got together, they would go into a corner and talk about a mysterious thing called sex. It sounded wonderful. I prayed that it would not go away before I grew up.”

[The Other Side of Me, Sidney Sheldon]

I was born during Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime. Normally many of us in Pakistan these days take pride in citing such coincidences. It looks like leaving a ‘positive impression’ on one’s readers or listeners that ‘yes, I grew up during the gruesome martial law days. I was born as a Muslim and the State of Pakistan forced me to be a re-born Muslim.”

I was only five when Zia, the ultra-Islamic dictator, perished in an air crash in August 1988.

Yet, Zia’s legacy continued. I was brainwashed and spoon-fed a lot of Islamic stuff at home as well as at school. While children of our age elsewhere in the world delightedly harped about cartoons and music, we spent a considerable amount of time discussing with our compatriots about Life after Death. We coveted Janaat (Paradise). We endlessly speculated about the beauty of the Hoors
(the beautiful women promised to the ‘faithful men’ who would qualify to Paradise).

Among all topics that we kept guessing about the First Night of Grave (Qabar ki Pheli raath) topped the list. We spent hours and hours discussing how the first night inside the grave would possibly feel like. Would we wake up inside the grave once we are buried? Would we converse in Arabic, even if we can’t speak that language, with Munkir Nakeer, the angels, according to the Islamic belief, assigned to inquire the dead man about his life performance? Will we have the same memory and senses while we interact with the angels? These questions increased as I grew up.

Then there was the 1990s when I entered my teens. Pakistan had resumed its journey towards democracy. We were entering an age of ‘liberalization’ and openness of the society. Our VCRs (Video Cassette Recorders) played Indian movies. We mimicked all that we watched. Now, the interest of people of my age slightly diverted from hardcore religion to more intrinsic matters such as girls, beauty, romance and marriage.

The next mysterious thing my peers and I kept on talking about at the college cafeteria at recess time was the first night of wedding which is so beautifully called Sohagrat in Hindi/Urdu. “What actually happens on that particular night,” was the starting question that continued for years with guesses and “strategies.”

The first night of Grave.
The first Night of wedding

The first night of Grave
The first night of wedding

Wedding. Grave. Grave. Wedding. Grave. Wedding. The first night. ? ? ? ?

……………………

I entered my 20s with another martial law in place. Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler, had publicly declared war with the people of my province, Balochistan.
“I will hit you [the Baloch leaders] in a way that you don’t know what hit you,” thundered the General on a TV channel.

The state intelligence agencies began to whisk away people and put them into torture cells. It was the first time we, as university students, had heard about the agencies. Agencies were a new but fascinating topic for us to discuss inside our hostel rooms. Agencies were a new phenomenon. Discussing about them was just like talking about ghosts. Some of us believed in their existence. The others did not.

“But I don’t believe that the agencies do exist,” said one of my friends as we sipped black tea in my Room No 10 at the 2nd Block of University of Balochistan in Quetta one winter evening.
“Why don’t you believe in agencies,” I slapped.

“What is this you guys keep talking about? Agencies. Agencies. Agencies. I don’t believe in agencies. You guys are simply scared. It is ridiculous when you say some people dressed in plains clothes come like a UFO (unidentified flying object) and take people away. And people suddenly go ‘missing’,” he argued.
As time passed, discussions whether agencies exited or not echoed in Balochistan’s class rooms, hotels, shops, mosques, homes and even kitchens.

While we debated the existence of ‘Faristhas’ (Angels), as we locally called them, the latter rapidly captured the whole of Balochistan. Their influence increased. They began to engineer elections. They approved and disapproved transfer and posting of all officials. They tapped journalists’ phone calls and invited them for ‘friendly advice’ in cantonment area. They followed political leaders’ movements. They whisked away five thousand people. Put them into torture cells. Denied them access to judicial justice. No body knew where they had gone. We called them ‘disappeared’ people. There were so many of them that it was hard to keep a right count on all of them.
………………………………

Now many of us believe in the existence of agencies. But that is not what we keep talking about.

The first night of Grave.
The first Night of wedding

The first night of Grave
The first night of wedding


No. No. These days we do not talk about the first night of grave or wedding. We imagine about the first night of torture cell. We keep talking to ourselves and our friends how the first night of torture cell would feel like. Many Balochs are certain about being taken to a torture cell one day or the other. So all that we keep talking about is what questions the hosting intelligence agencies would ask. How severe the torture would feel like. How much space the small and dark cabin ‘reserved’ for one’s confinement would occupy?

Today, I met a lot of people who talked about Qambar Chakar’s first night at torture cell. “What do you think they could have asked him,” asked a class fellow of Chakar. The other said, “do you think they have beaten him up severely? “ Do you think he has met Zakir Majeed and Chakar Qambarani inside the torture cell?

I don’t know, guys.
I have experienced none:

The First Night of Grave
The First Night of Wedding
The First Night of Torture Cell

Khan of Kalat for international mediation on Balochistan

LONDON: The UK-based self-exiled Khan of Kalat has said that without international mediation he would not become part of any talks to address the security-related and economic problems of Balochistan.

Mir Suleman Daud Baloch, who is awaiting a decision on his asylum application from the House of Lords, plans to move the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the status of Kalat, which became part of Pakistan under an agreement signed on March 27, 1948, between Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the then Khan of Kalat Mir Ahmad Yar Khan.

A news item three days back had termed it a positive sign that the Khan of Kalat had not yet moved the ICJ over the accusation that Pakistan has not fulfilled the promises it had made at the time of signing the treaty, but the real reason behind the delay is the Khan of Kalat’s inability to travel outside of Britain while the British government considers his appeal.

Immigration experts believe that the 35th Khan of Kalat, who has been seeking asylum since July 2007, will ultimately be granted asylum because of his profile and the ongoing unrest in the restive province. It has become almost a standard procedure in the UK to refuse asylum claims in the first phase no matter how serious the case is but appeals with serious grounds of fear of persecution are ultimately allowed and the Khan of Kalat’s case falls in this bracket, an immigration expert told this correspondent.

Speaking to The News, the Khan said he was not interested in the government’s offers and said he was determined to move international forums to seek attention towards the problems of Balochistan.

“I don’t need any offers from the government. I came out of Pakistan on my own free will and will return when I want. My return to Pakistan and becoming part of the so-called dialogue process in not the solution to problems my people are facing. My people have given me a mandate and a duty to take their case to the ICJ and I am determined to stand by them,” the Khan of Kalat said in reference to a September 2006 grand Baloch Jirga, convened after about 126 years, which recommended that a case should be lodged in the ICJ against what it termed violation of agreements signed by the State of Kalat, the Crown of Britain and the Government of Pakistan pertaining to the sovereignty and rights of the Baloch people.

The Khan said that President Asif Ali Zardari and Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the UK Wajid Shamsul Hasan had phoned him several months ago, asking him to return to Pakistan for negotiations but he told the president bluntly that the approaches he was taking to address the Baloch issue were ineffective.

“I told President Zardari that Balochistan’s issue cannot be solved through all partiesí conferences, increasing the budgets and making more hollow promises. I told him that he may be well-meaning but he was powerless to do anything on the ground. The real power, he knows, lies elsewhere. If Zardari was powerful and independent in taking decisions, why would he go to the United Nations to seek justice for his wife Benazir Bhutto’s murder?”

Refusing to be part of any efforts to settle the Baloch issue, the Khan of Kalat, who lives with his family in Cardiff, lay down only one condition to become part of the talks. “The talks have to be mediated by the United States of America, Russia, the United Kingdom or other European countries. The Pakistani government should choose anyone of them. Accept that and you will find me ready to sit down for meaningful talks. There is no point for us any more in getting engaged with powerless people. That option is off the table now. Sixty years of broken promises have broken my faith completely in the sincerity of Islamabad.”

Answering a question, His Highness, as it states on his passport, said that Governor Zulfikar Magsi and many others in the provincial government had said it on record that they are powerless and cannot promise any change to the status quo. “Invitations to talks and big promises were a hoax being played to divert the attention from the real issues.”

By Murtaza Ali Shah

http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=23205

Balochistan: Another member of BSO (azaad) Shaal zone abducted

Quetta: BSO (azaad) website sagaar.org has reported that the leader of BSO (A) Shaal zone has been abducted by the Pakistan's secret agencies. He has been taken to an undisclosed location and his whereabouts remain unknown.

We request to all International Human Rights Organisations to help us raise voice against forced-disappearances in Balochistan. We also request the Baloch diaspora to raise their voices against the atrocities of Pakistani and Iranian regimes against innocent and unarmed Baloch civilians.

Thanks to Sagaar and BSO (azaad) for updating us with situation in Balochistan

Another BSO leader whisked away in Quetta

QUETTA: Another key leader of the Baloch Students’ Organisation (BSO-Azad), a student at the Balochistan University of Information Technology and Management Sciences (BUITMS), was whisked away, allegedly by intelligence agencies, on Friday.

“Qambar Chakar, the deputy organiser of BSO-Azad Quetta zone, was picked up by a group of intelligence agencies’ personnel who had rushed to the university in around eight vehicles,” Salam Sabir, the BSO central information secretary, told Daily Times. The BSO spokesman threatened of strikes across the province. Qambar is the third prominent BSO-Azad leader to be picked up, the spokesman said. He said BSO Quetta Zone President Shahzaib Baloch had been ‘disappeared’ in April and remained missing for two months. BSO Central Vice Chairman Zakir Majeed was also taken away last month, allegedly by the intelligence agencies, and is still missing, he added. BSO supporters on Friday surrounded the BUITMS campus in protest against Chakar’s arrest and threatened to shut all educational institutions in the city if he was not released immediately.

By Malik Siraj Akbar