Chairman of the Baloch National Movement, Dr. Naseem Baloch, has said that targeting the BNP’s gathering is the second major attempt to assassinate Akhtar Mengal. Earlier, his long march was targeted through a suicide attack. Pakistan is repeatedly proving that, now, in Balochistan, not only politics but even breathing is possible only on one condition: to comply, without hesitation or question, with the strategy of the state of Pakistan and its military, which is based on Baloch genocide, collective punishment, exploitation of Baloch resources, and erasure of Baloch national identity and survival. Anyone who dares to differ even slightly on any point will be made an example by the state.
He said that targeting the BNP’s gathering is essentially a message to those Baloch political circles who still support politics within the Pakistani framework. There is no ambiguity that the BNP’s public gathering and its leader, Sardar Akhtar Mengal, were targeted by the state. Now it depends on the state whether it accepts this act under the name of ISIS or any other state asset, or keeps it hidden. But state silence cannot conceal state crimes.
Dr. Naseem Baloch said that although we have fundamental differences with the BNP’s way of politics, the attack on its public gathering is part of the ongoing Baloch genocide and is condemnable. Parliamentary circles must remember that Pakistan has turned politics for the Baloch into a prohibited act and made it so difficult that only those can survive who not only remain subservient to the Pakistani army but also bow down to disgraceful and humiliating military conditions.
He said that the situation has now reached a point where Pakistan does not even tolerate a limited voice from its own sworn-in parliamentarians, and on our own land it is crushing politics, resistance, and democratic expression through the weapons of terrorism. This attack further exposes the state’s war crimes and leaves an open question for the international community: how long will this silence continue over the flowing blood of the Baloch?
Dr. Naseem Baloch said that from the Pakistani military approach, the world should realize that if even a parliamentary politician like Sardar Akhtar Mengal is not safe, then the Baloch youth, women, and children who have dreamed of freedom—how bloody and brutal Pakistan treats them. And for the subjugated and oppressed Baloch of occupied Balochistan, who raise their voice for national freedom outside the Pakistani framework, the horrific treatment of this terrorist state is unimaginably severe and agonizing.
