Thousands of Baloch activists are forced to live in exile. Khalil Baloch

The chairman of the Baloch National Movement, Khalil Baloch, said that the United Arab Emirates had violated International laws by extraditing human rights activist Rashid Hussain illegally to Pakistan on 22 June 2019. Later on, after a hiatus of nine months, a Pakistan court had declared him fugitive all the while when he was already in the illegal torture cells of Pakistan.

“All available evidence suggests that Rashid Hussain was delivered to Pakistani authorities by flying him on a chartered flight on 22 June 2019 to a Pakistani military airbase in Dalbandin.“

He said that Pakistan had stifled all political and social activists associated with the Baloch freedom struggle. Political and Human rights activists were abducted and thousands of them had been killed and dumped. Due to these daily military operations and massacres in different parts of Balochistan thousands of activists were forced to live in exile. Thousands of Baloch political and social workers had been living as refugees in the United State of America, Europe, the United Arab Emirates, and other parts of the world, and they had been also in the meantime been fulfilling their national obligations and raising their voices against the injustices in Balochistan.

Rashid Hussain was one of them who went to UAE in 2017 and worked in a private firm. Later on, he was arrested by one of the spy agencies of the United Arab Emirates on 22 December 2018.

Chairman Khalil Baloch said, the extradition of Rashid Hussain to Pakistan was aired as breaking news in all Pakistani electronic media houses; claiming that the Rashid Hussain a nominated perpetrator involved in the attack on the Chinese embassy had been arrested in UAE with the help of Interpol and been extradited to Pakistan.

We have full knowledge that Pakistani media neither utters nor prints a single word without the due instruction that comes from the state. In the same year on 16th April, the Anti-terrorist court of Karachi declared Rashid Hussain a fugitive. And as a matter of fact when the court nominated Rashid Hussain as a fugitive, on the exact time his family members along with other family members of Baloch missing persons were protesting before the Karachi Press Club.

The chairman of BNM said the arrest and later on his extradition to Pakistan goes completely against the human rights values and international laws. Article.3 of International Convention conveys that nobody can be extradited to his or her native country when he or she has a fear of persecution and death. The United Arab Emirates disrespected Arab and Baloch norms and international convocation by handing over the Baloch social activist unconditionally to Pakistan. If the government of UAE had followed all proper procedures of immigration laws and kept Baloch and Arabs norms in view and provided Rashid Hussain a transparent court trial before extraditing him to Pakistan then today his family and the entire Baloch nation would have been protected from these agonies. As well as the entire Baloch nation would have never complained to their friendly neighboring country i.e the United Arab Emirates.

Khalil Baloch said on 22 June as a year of handing over of Rashid Baloch to Pakistan his family remains a symbol of pain and suffering like thousands of other families whose loved ones had been abducted by Pakistan army and Intelligence agencies of Pakistan. Baloch National Movement will run an online campaign on 22 June.

He further added, “I appeal to Baloch political activists and human loving people to take part in this campaign. We have to address this issue that all political and social activists who are in exile so that they can be the collective voice of the Baloch nation. The family of Rashid Hussain has made enormous sacrifices in this struggle. Today along with his brave mother and sister his entire aggrieved family has been protesting in the streets. We have to be the voice of those victims who are enduring tortures in illegal and inhuman Pakistani army-run prisons.”