US should support independent Balochistan: American lawmaker
WASHINGTON: The US should support the Baloch people and other oppressed groups in Pakistan, who are being subject to grave human rights violations for demanding the right to self-determination, a senior American lawmaker has said. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said Pakistan needs to remember what happened in 1971, referring to developments in then East Pakistan which later on became Bangladesh after years of Pakistani human rights abuses and persecution of the local population. Resource-rich Balochistan, Pakistan's largest but least populated province, has been wracked by a long-running separatist insurgency which has seen brutal repression by Pakistani security forces and enforced disappearances. "When the people of Bangladesh wanted to be a little independent of the Pakistani government, have some way to control their own lives and control their own government, they were brutally repressed by the Pakistani government, and that is what led to, basically, the uprising of the people in Bangladesh when they freed themselves," Rohrabacher said yesterday in the US House of Representatives. That same type of oppression is continuing not only against the Baloch, but also against the Muhajirs who came over from India after Partition, he said.
Read more: Times of India
