Balochistan Human Rights Watch: Constant victimization and harassment of Baloch development activists in South Asia Partners Pakistan

Nausheen Qambarani, Sherbaz Baloch and Asif Baloch, who have been working in the Balochistan office of an organization called South Asia Partners Pakistan (SAP-PK) since November 2005 where the project office was formed in Quetta, report of a gruesome cycle of constant victimization and harassment against Baloch development activists.

They tell about their long life experience about working professionally with the development sector of Balochistan in different non governmental organizations such as Oxfam-GB, SAHER and SPO. However, they never experienced such kind of severe harassment, discrimination and insecurity throughout their career simply because of their ethnic background.

It is more than obvious that the management of the SAP-PK has made all out efforts to undermine all Baloch activists to work for the welfare of the people of Balochistan by applying various dirty tactics of degradation at personal and professional level.

Evidently on the official front, the management never fulfilled its promises made to the communities and stake holders in the province such as forming Kisan Bethaks in districts and providing funds to Peasants and Worker Groups to run the small projects. Most of the Provincial reports and data were used to be displaces in the Head Office.

Head office doesn't have any Human Resource Section and there is no Performance Evaluation system yet, there is no check and balance system inside the organization.  

Furthermore, Nausheen Qambarani, Sherbaz Baloch and Asif Baloch tell that in order to complete their tenure and run the project smoothly, they had to ignore all harassmental gestures and attitudes and biased comments regarding their (Baloch) culture, traditional dresses and Baloch people.  They remained undeterred despite all pressure tactics. Finally, they were further subjected to unethical attitude and asked to leave the organisation.

The episodes of discrimination and harassment have ended after the following three incidents, when all Baloch employees of the organization were forced to quit the organization by one way or other:

1.      On 30^th June, 2008 a fake letter was sent to DG Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) filled with allegations against Nausheen Qambarani (x- Provincial Coordinator) , accusing her to be working for Baloch militant organizations. She was interrogated and harassed by the ISI officials for more than a month. During this while she was threatened to face unimaginable consequences and her mobile phone and landline calls were taped. She was threatened not to mention this harassment to anyone. After the interrogation and harassment was completed by the ISI, the same was started by Mr. Muhammad Tahseen, Executive Director of SAP-PK. Instead of supporting a woman employee, the Executive Director threatened Nausheen to quit her job and leave the city saying her that “If you resign from SAP-PK, you will remain safe.”

2.      Mr. Sherbaz Baloch was terminated from his job in written, telling him that he was not capable of doing such a job as he is not competent. Although, Mr. Sherbaz Baloch has been rewarded many times verbally as well as in written by his nearest superiors for his brilliant job at the office. Mr. Sherbaz Baloch had raised the issue of unavailability of the budget for development activities in Balochistan on behalf of the organization. He was told that the budget was consumed in the Head Office.

3.      Against the discriminating policies of the SAP-PK administration, the third and the last Baloch in the SAP-PK Quetta office, Mr. Asif Baloch resigned from his job in this organization.

Here it is obvious that the people working in SAP-PK head office are lacking basic human values and official decorum and ethics. They threatened the 3 mentioned Baloch  not to raise this issue otherwise the management of SAP-PK will use its influence and will make sure that their development sector career will come to an end.

As it is completely obvious and evident, there is not any other reason for this discrimination and harassment to see  than the fact that this organization aims at looting the resources of Baloch people by misusing the name of Balochistan's backwardness.

We in ‘’Balochistan Human Rights Watch’’  urge all the national and international non-profit organizations, United Nation’s agencies, and Human Rights organizations to take notice of this harassment being meted out to Baloch people, namely examplified by this concrete example, on the basis of our ethnic background.

Balochistan Human Rights Watch / Radio Balochi FM

22.08.2008

Related links

http://www.gwank.org/nov08/quett20081121.html

http://www.gwank.org/vob/reports/nosin_1.ra