Balochistan: The real occupation and genocide that mainstream media and liberals don’t care about

Balochistan: The real occupation and genocide that mainstream media and liberals don’t care about

While fake instances of “Palestinian suffering” has been taking up all the bandwidth of media attention in the West, mainstream media and liberal activists have been surprisingly silent over the suffering of Baloch people living under the brutal occupation of Iran and Pakistan. Once an independent people with distinct ethnicity, culture and language, Baloch people today are living under foreign military occupation.

In 1928, the armies of the Shah of Iran took hold of the western part of Balochistan. Today over 2 million Baloch are living under Iranian rule, more than 80 percent of them in abject poverty. Just like Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in Northern Iran, ill-fed and outgunned Baloch have been putting up resistance to the Mullah Regime in the south. Forgotten by the rest of the world, Kurds and Baloch are facing an increasingly well-equipped Iranian army — replenished thanks to 150 billion dollar windfall from Obama’s sanctions relief.

After the British Rule came to an end in Indian Subcontinent in 1947, Pakistan’s army launched a military campaign bringing the whole of British-held Balochistan under its control. Pakistan-occupied Baluchistan is roughly the size of Germany. Just like the neighbouring Iran, some 7 million ethnic Baloch have been living under virtual military rule and have one of the highest infant mortality and poverty rates in the world. According to independent estimates, more than 18,000 people have disappeared in Balochistan in the wake of military campaign launched by Pakistan since 2003.

With Balochistan’s huge natural gas reserves and its shoreline strategically facing the Gulf of Hormuz, China is showing considerable interest in the region. Since 2015, China took over the Port of Gwadar Port and converted it into a naval base. German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports:

Last year in April, Chinese President Xi Jinping signed 51 accords to inaugurate the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which will create a network of roads, railways and pipelines linking China’s restive west to the Arabian Sea through Balochistan’s Gwadar port. The Pakistani government says the deals will boost Pakistan’s underperforming economy and generate employment opportunities in Balochistan. (…) Some Baloch leaders have also complained that Islamabad deliberately changed the corridor route in favor of the Punjab, avoiding Balochistan’s key cities.

Baloch people, much like the Kurds in the Middle East, are an occupied and forgotten people within the Muslim World. Not only do Kurds and Baloch share a similar history of dispossession and persecution at the hands of brutal Islamic regimes, they also share common ethnic and linguistic heritage rooted in their pre-Islamic history.

United Nations and Arab League, obsessed with Israel, can’t be bothered to pass a single resolution addressing the plight of Baloch people. Forgotten by the rest of the world, these are one of the bravest forsaken allies in West’s war against Radical Islam.

Map of Balochistan:

#Baluchistan: A real occupation, a real genocide – Western media and activists couldn’t care less pic.twitter.com/T9ry1cHWRr

— vijeta uniyal (@iUniyal) August 23, 2016

Video: Noted Muslim critic of Islamism Tarek Fatah explains Balochistan Conflict

[Cover Image courtesy Tarek Fatah, YouTube] [Author is Indian analyst based in Germany]

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