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Washington, Mar.8 : The United States may be seen as the global champion of human rights and freedoms, but suprisingly its concern over promoting or safeguarding these rights or freedoms in Pakistan’s remote and rugged Balochistan province have found no mention in the annual human rights report prepared by its State Department.
The status of human rights in Balochistan was in focus on Capitol Hill in Washington these past few days with the U.S. House of Representatives and World Sindhi Institute hosting a conference to discuss the issue.
While the U.S. State Department’s 19-page report into Human Rights Practices for Pakistan barely mentions Balochistan, opting to focus on the impact of Islam and general politics and not on the treatment of specific ethnic groups, human rights campaigner Miriam Young believes that Washington probably has a reason to barely address Balochistan. "I’m sure that to some extent foreign policy and strategic concerns do play a part. I think that has to be one factor. But it also is to a certain extent can be traced back to people in the embassy who are responsible for compile that information, how serious are they, how concerned are they, how conscientious are they and how much information are they able to gather from local sources. So, it may be that from Balochistan, there isn’t all that much available," ANI quotes Miriam Young as saying
What, however, is available in the report is a long history of how Balochistan has been an ndependent country and how that status has changed in the decades since the Pakistan-India split in the wake of the end of the British Empire.
Scholars at the World Sindhi Institute’s panel on "Human Rights in Focus: Balochistan" discussed how they feel this history is impacting current events, including Selig Harrison, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.
"I wanted to give you that history because I think it’s important to understand the roots of the anger today. And how you get men so motivated that they will go out and fight in relatively small numbers against a major, well-equipped army, equipped, of course, by the United States," ANI quoted Harrison as saying.
Harrison further went onto say that much remains unknown about what is going on in Balochistan today, because it is relatively remote and undeveloped, while being rich in natural resources, such as natural gas.
"But just what is happening right now, militarily, is not entirely clear, at least not to me and I hope to learn more today. Because the army has not announced that there is an operation going on in Balochistan, it hasn’t admitted, in spite of many charges, that there is one."
The U.S. State Department country report on Pakistan notes that while there have been a few improvements in human rights, Islamabad’s record remains generally poor. Miriam Young has worked for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights and the Asia-Pacific Center for Justice and Peace. She summarizes that it will take more than words from Washington to improve human rights across Pakistan.
"Although its difficult to preach something from the West, its something that’s going to have to change from within. And, its not acceptable. And, the women of Pakistan know that it is not acceptable, but they are working in a very, very difficult environment to try to bring about change," Young said
Young also said that she is convinced that the general concerns with human rights in Pakistan can be specifically applied to Balochistan, starting with the status of women.
"If the status of women is so appalling, that says something about the status of the whole population. And if the human rights situation is that bad for women, that’s a statement about the country and about the region," she adds.
Young has a very simple prescription for improving human rights in Balochistan and across Pakistan.
"I think that probably the most important thing in terms of bringing about any changes in society and improvements in human rights is focusing on the education and raising the educational standards of the population and that doesn’t just mean the education of women, that means the education of men as well," Asian News International quoted her as saying.
Harrison also believes that there is a political solution as well.
"If the 1973 constitution were to be honored and the not fully autonomous and sovereign but considerable provincial autonomy were to be granted, to Balochistan, Sindh and the Pashtun areas, I believe that many of the abuses and problems that we are talking about could be resolved," Harrison says.
Human rights campaigners are arguing that Washington needs to add and enforce conditions on aid to Pakistan, with an eye toward improving the situation for all Pakistanis. Harrison agrees.
"The United States should not only condition its weapons aid and its economic aid on human rights conditions, educational reform conditions and non-interference in the affairs of neighbors such as
Kashmir conditions, but I also think it should be conditioned on a broader democratic reform process which should certainly include a return to the 1973 constitution as a minimum first step, so those are my views," ANI quoted Harrison as saying.
Others are convinced that Islamabad just wants to turn Balochistan into a military installation, a cantonment. Hasan Mujtaba is a journalist who has a regular column with BBC Urdu and he said: "Baloch nationalist leaders and activists think that General Musharraf, unlike his predecessor does at least have his agenda. He wants to convert Balochistan into a modern, beautiful cantonment."
Others are convinced that Washington must take the lead. They feel that the world’s most powerful countries must lead by example. Zahid Makhdoom is the President of the World Sindhi Institute and he fears bad actors.
"Countries like U.S., countries like U.K., these are big and powerful entities, engage in world politics. They have an obligation to not be bad, because badness is very contagious. If you are going to be bad, if you are going to treat the world with shock and awe, you must be rest assured that people like Musharraf are going to unleash that shock and awe on their own people on an everyday basis. With the weapons that you give them, with the money that you give them, with the support and legitimacy that you give them, these people are going to use all of these tools that you give them to help their societies, they are going to brutalize their societies," Makhdoom claimed.
And several of the presenters agreed that part of the solution to improving human rights in both Balochistan and across Pakistan is to raise awareness. Dr. Malek Towghi was a professor at Michigan State University and serves as a liaison for Baloch Human Rights International.
"We are going to have our freedom. If you will help us, we will thank you, if you will not help us, we will, in Balochi, there is a proverb, but it is too strong, I will not say that, that means, you will remain with dishonor of not supporting a good cause. But please Americans, I am here as a Baloch person, tell your government, tell you Congress, tell your president, stop supporting the Punjabi and Urdu-speaking tyrants in Pakistan," Towghi said.
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