London [UK], August 17 (ANI): Baloch Human Rights Council (BHRC) and Centre for Gender Justice and Women Empowerment (CGJWE) has highlighted the systematic imposition of religious extremism on the Baloch community by Pakistan in a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres ahead of the 57th session of the UNHRC.
The organisations have also outlined the multifaceted strategies employed by Pakistan to suppress Baloch’s national aspirations, emphasizing the growing threat of religious radicalization as a tool of state oppression.
They have alleged that the Pakistani state has consistently used religious fundamentalism as part of its broader agenda to dilute Baloch resistance, alongside enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, economic exploitation and a media blackout.
The statement highlighted how Pakistan has been orchestrating these acts of suppression and religious extremism to erase the individualistic Baloch identity.
According to the statement, the Pakistani modus operandi to counter the Baloch national aspirations has been multifaceted. Besides arrests of political workers, the kill and dump policy, and the media blackout of the Baloch conflict, it had persistently implemented a policy of introducing religious fundamentalism, suppression of the Balochi language and socio-cultural traditions, mutilation of history, economic exploitation and strategies for converting the Baloch into a minority.
“It constitutes a post-World War II colonial order and sustains itself on an ideology based on religious bigotry. The pillars on which the state nationalism of Pakistan is sustained are the economic exploitation and the brutal and inhuman use of state power to assimilate subjugated national entities,” the statement read.
While elaborating on Pakistan’s acts of manipulating the Baloch history the statement mentioned, “All adventurers, plunderers, and invaders who came from the Middle East or Central Asia, such as Muhammad bin Qasim, Mahmud Ghaznavi, Ghuris, Timurids, Suris, Mongols, and Abdali have been given the status of national heroes of Pakistan.”
“These barbaric conquerors carried out genocide acts in Balochistan, slaughtering thousands of the Baloch, but Baloch children are now forced to regard them as saviours. School textbooks not only teach a fictitious version of history but Islam is also portrayed in a way that supports the oppression of the minority nationalities in the name of “Allah and Islamic solidarity”. The education system aims at creating a population of fanatical adherents to a falsified religious doctrine based on hatred towards the followers of other faiths,” it added.
The organisations said that in the 1970s, many mosques and religious schools were established throughout Balochista, and with massive state funding, mullahs (priests) are becoming increasingly prominent in Baloch society, both socially and politically. They further said that the “religious fanatics” produced by these Islamic schools are not only threatening the socio-cultural traditions of Baloch society but they are being organized as the army’s proxy death squads in their conflict with the Baloch nationalist forces.
“We urge the United Nations to pressure Pakistani authorities to stop the acts of ‘laterally introducing religious extremism in a secular Baloch society,” the statement added. (ANI)
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