The president of the Baloch American Congress (BAC) thanked people worldwide who took part in a Twitter campaign for the freedom of book publisher Faheem Baloch and thousands of other victims of enforced disappearances in Pakistan.
“I thank everyone who took part in our twitter campaign which will become a regular feature of our works,”
Dr. Tara Chand, president of B.A.C. said in a press statement Saturday.
He added Pakistan military and I.S.I. are repeating the actions of Hitler, Goebbels and Stalin by forcibly disappearing Faheem Baloch.
Dr. Tara Chand, a former government minister who now lives in exile in the U.S., said Faheem Baloch was at his book shop in Karachi on August 26, 2022, when he forcibly disappeared by the intelligence sleuths. “He was only asked the question ‘Did you send books to Germany?’ and when he answered ‘Yes,’ he was taken away.”
He said the action of the Pakistani intelligence was akin to what Hitler and Goebbels did with book lovers in Germany and what Joseph Stalin in Russia.
He said more than 5,000 enforced disappearances victims are languishing in I.S.I. dungeons. “They include doctors, scholars, intellectuals, poets, writers, journalists, book authors and simple book readers.
He expressed regrets that during his recent visit to Pakistan, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres kept his lips sealed on the crimes against humanity being perpetrated on the Baloch people by Pakistan’s military and intelligence services.
“The plight of the Baloch cannot be left to the sweet will of Islamabad as in Pakistan it is the Rawalpindi military generals who call the shots to this day.”
He said if civilian leaders like Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and other parties in the provincial governments are not able to stop the military atrocities against the common people, then they should take the high road and resign immediately.
Dr. Tara Chand appealed to U.S. State Department to play a more active role in ending the tsunami of human rights violations in Balochistan.
“Secretary Anthony Blinken and Deputy Secretary Wendy R. Sherman can definitely send the right message by telling Pakistan army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa that the U.S. can not stay silent over the happenings in Balochistan.”