Four months and more than 2,000 kilometres later, the Long March of the Baloch is today reaching its final destination: the UN office in Pakistan's capital city Islamabad. A group of 16 relatives of missing people have been touring the country during this time, demanding justice and a better deal for Baluchistan, Pakistan's westernmost province. In view that Pakistani courts are ignoring them, the protesters have decided to take their claims to the UN, where they will be delivering a memorandum which lists human rights violations suffered by their families and by many other Baloch.

According to Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (the organization behind the Long March), forceful disappearances at the hands of the army amount to 18,500 since 2000. Among the missing are political and human rights activists and liberal professionals, the group says. According to the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), 730 missing persons have been extrajudicially executed since 2010. AHRC describes the activities of the Pakistani army in Balochistan as "state sponsored terrorism" and accuses the Pakistani courts of "doing nothing" to stop enforced disappearances, in a country where the military still holds much of the power.

A conflict that started seven decades ago

Since Pakistan became independent in 1947, there have been five major periods of armed violence in Balochistan. As recorded by the database of the School for a Culture of Peace, the current violent cycle began in 2005 and is dribven by the sense of alienation of the Baloch population compared to the other provinces of Pakistan, especially if compared with the more populated one, Punjab. Balochistan is the least developed province of the country, although it has significant reserves of natural resources and provides 40% of Pakistan's energy needs.

Some Baloch nationalist groups are demanding more autonomy for the province, more powers to manage its own resources and the end of armed actions by the Pakistani army. Other movements are calling for full independence. Some of those movements are peacful, while others have adopted armed struggle.

The Pakistani Government for its part denies that large-scale atrocities reported by the Long March are happening at all. According to the government, the problem arises from the fact that some Baluchistan pro-independence groups are using terrorism to advance their agendas. Pakistan further says that those groups are being funded by India, its main regional rival.

A people divided between three states

Pakistan is only one of three states which are currently dividing the Baloch people (see map). West Balochistan lies in easternmost Iran. As in Pakistan, the Baloch national movement there denounces state repression. Baloch groups argue that, since the establishment of the Ayatollah regime, Baloch activists have suffered political persecution, imprisonment and murder. They also say that the Iranian state bans the dissemination of Baloch language and culture.

The other state with significant Baluchi population is Afghanistan, where the situation is relatively better for them. However, their relative weight in Afghanistan's overall population is weak. This brings difficulties with respect to their access to government posts and the role of their language in schools and the media.

(Picture: a moment during the Long March / image by Sharnoff 's Global View.)