Dilip Simeon's blog

KARACHI, April 26 (Reuters) - A suspected female suicide bomber killed three Chinese teachers in Karachi on Tuesday, police and officials said, drawing strong condemnation from Beijing, in the first major attack this year against nationals of long-time ally China working in Pakistan. The three were among passengers on a minibus returning to Karachi university after a lunch break when the bomb exploded at the entrance to the university's Confucius Institute, killing the Chinese teachers and a Pakistani national, police and officials said. A separatist group, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) based in southwestern Balochistan province bordering Afghanistan and Iran, claimed responsibility for the blast, adding in an email to Reuters the attack was carried out by a woman suicide bomber. It shared in the email a photo of her clad in a long shawl sitting with two children. The photo could not be verified independently by police or other officials... The bombing was the first major atta...

SOMETIME around the first week of December, the residents of Gwadar woke up to find work taking place to build a large metal fence that would stretch from just north of the old airport and extend westward along a road known as the Balochistan Broadway Avenue. The total length of the fence would be 24 kilometres, and according to what the locals were able to gather, it is planned to extend in a straight line along the central divider of Broadway Avenue and then cut straight south to the sea. Along the way, it will cut two habitations of 30 to 40 houses into two parts, one part inside the fence and one outside. The master plan for Gwadar includes three special zones, known as the Gwadar Port Free Zone (2,280 acres), GIEDA Industrial Zone (3,000 acres) and EPZA export processing zone (1,000 acres). As part of the infrastructure development programme for these three zones, a series of projects are envisioned, including construction of roads, utilities, warehouses and security. In the pro...

Hailing from the restive province of Balochistan and being a vocal critic of the Pakistani State on the issue of forced disappearances, Karima Mehrab had for long received threats and intimidation in Pakistan. She was forced to leave Pakistan but continued to receive threats on her life in Canada. Her uncle was  killed , her home was raided more than twice, and her family in Pakistan was repeatedly threatened to persuade her to give up activism...   Karima Mehrab Baloch was a known crusader of justice, relentless in her demand for equality for persecuted residents of Balochistan in Western Pakistan. Her  death  in Canada this week caused an uproar, even as the Toronto police said the incident appeared to be a “non-criminal” matter without any foul play. For Karima’s supporters in Balochistan and elsewhere, though, that is hardly reassuring. Karima Mehrab, who had been living in exile in Canada, is not the first Pakistani human rights activist who faced death t...

NB: This is a dangerous move by the Trinamool government. If the Kolkata Police forced the cancellation on apprehension of communal disturbance, it must be on  the assumption that 'Muslim sentiment' is invariably conservative, and pro-Pakistani. This is a false and mischievous assumption, and it is precisely the kind of stereotype that feeds Hindutva anti-Muslim propaganda. The atrocities committed by the Pakistan army in 1971 are well-documented, yet there are Islamists in Kolkata who protested the decisions of the Bangladesh war-crimes tribunal in 2013. A pro-Shahbagh rally at the Bangladesh High Commission by secular democrats was called off under police pressure.  A similar episode occurred in Chennai in 2013 when a talk by the American Islamic scholar Ms Amina Wadud was cancelled under police pressure due to threats of 'hurt sentiment' delivered by a little-known outfit called Indiya Towheed Jamaad in 2013. This kind of political interference in democratic deb...

It is one thing for the US officials to describe Pakistan as the  ‘ally from hell’  and its policies as ‘duplicitous’ and quite another to actually remove any doubt about it by taking out Mullah Akhtar Mansour  right on Pakistani soil. Mullah Mansour was the Afghan Taliban’s current emir, a  graduate of the Haqqaniah seminary  located about an hour’s drive from the Pakistan army’s General Headquarters and  Pakistan’s handpicked successor  to their previous leader Mullah Muhammad Omar. Pakistan’s military leaders, who have a chokehold on the country’s foreign and national security policies, were caught yet again with their hand in the cookie jar. This past weekend a US drone strike killed Mullah Mansour near  Nushki  in Pakistan’s Balochistan province where he was likely en route to his usual abode near the provincial capital Quetta.  Five years earlier the US had eliminated the al-Qaeda leader  Osama bin Laden  in a raid...

Last month a shocking story gained little traction in the mainstream press, despite its horrific implications and brutal reality. A report from Iran emerged which  detailed how every male  from a village in the province of Sistan Balochistan had been executed. The Baloch, an ethnic minority in both Pakistan and Iran, continue to face systematic repression in both of these countries, yet remain largely ignored in both the East and the West. Simply having their voices heard remains a major struggle for this stateless population faced with poverty, violence and discrimination. The Baloch are a distinct ethnic group who reside in the lands between southwestern Pakistan, southeastern Iran and a very small section of southwestern Afghanistan. Yet many fear that they have become invisible in their plight. Their struggle is reduced to a footnote in a region locked in turmoil. Their stories are overshadowed by the refugee crisis, bloody civil wars, and an attempt to silence them i...

Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest and mineral rich province has been burning since 1947, at times piece by piece, at times wholesale. Problems facing Balochistan have never been addressed by any government to date. Now, when Baluchistan has its first middle-class Chief Minister, Dr. Malik Baloch, dumped bodies of “missing persons”, Hazaras’ genocide, and the exodus of Hindus and Christians goes on unabated. When a new government was formed last summer, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had an opportunity to bring the dissident Baloch to the negotiating table. However, instead of visiting Balochistan, Mr. Sharif, accompanied by the Chief Minister of Balochistan visited China with the aim of handing over Gwadar-Port and the Reko Diq project to the Chinese authorities. As a result the Baloch people lost hope that the new government would remedy their problems. Regarding their current visit to China, Baloch believe the purpose is to exploit their resources with the collaboration of China....

"Unsilencing Pakistan" was an idea first articulated in 2011. It has been revived following the recent murder of Sabeen Mahmud, who had attempted to create a space where Pakistanis could discuss contentious issues - like the human rights violations in Balochistan - without fear. Can Pakistan's intellectuals and human rights activists survive the "intellecticide" being perpetrated? Beena Sarwar is a journalist from Pakistan who blogs at  www.beenasarwar.wordpress.com   When the prestigious Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) announced that it was organising a seminar titled “Un-Silencing Balochistan” on 9 April 2015, it reminded me of the “Unsilencing Pakistan” initiative of the summer of 2011. Some of us had drafted a statement endorsed by several progressive voices—well-known journalists, lawyers, singers, musicians, doctors, entrepreneurs and others—condemning “the continuing harassment, torture, and killing of progressive thinkers, journal...

KARACHI: Although the gates of Karachi University’s Arts auditorium were sealed off by the administration, a scheduled session on ‘Baloch Missing persons and the Role of State and Society’ was held on university premises on Wednesday. On Tuesday, KU refused to let faculty members use the Arts auditorium to host the seminar, saying seminars related to sensitive issues were not allowed at university premises. Ahead of the session, Rangers and Police thoroughly scanned cars, not allowing outsiders inside the university.  “No outsiders were allowed today and the people attending the session were brought in professor’s cars,” campus security adviser Dr Muhammad Zubair told  The Express Tribune . Regarding the attendance of Baloch activist Mama Qadeer, Zubair said, “Mama Qadeer did not enter the building this morning.” “He may have been hiding here from last night, we are trying to investigate,” the campus security adviser added. The organiser, Dr Riaz Ahmed, a profess...

A recent escalation in violence underscores the pressing need for a human rights-based solution to the challenges, violations and brutality faced by the Baloch people. Vanessa Thevathasan and Monomita Raksit   recently spoke with human rights and political activists, closely linked with the International Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, on the case for Balochistan self-determination. For security reasons, the names of the activists have been withheld. Why are you pushing for self-determination for Balochistan? The Baloch nation is one of the most ancient in the region. Baloch lived in their homeland for thousands of years and had their own sovereign state until the arrival of the British in 1839. British colonialism and subsequent Persian and Punjabi Muslim occupations of Balochistan are illegal and immoral. Baloch has the same rights as any other free nation, to be free from subjugation and to determine its own affairs and future. Freedom is our most natural, inherent righ...