The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) said in a statement that evicting the people of Sardasht in the name of a security threat is a seizure of Baloch land and a state attack on Baloch survival.
The statement said Sardasht, near Shadi Kaur in Gwadar district, is an ancient Baloch settlement where about three thousand people have lived for generations. This whole area, including Rek Bazaar, Syed Muhammad Bazaar and Tolgo, is the centre of the local people’s social and economic life. Today the state is evicting these very people from their homes, land and ancestral area in the name of a security threat. The Baloch Yakjehti Committee condemns this state action in the strongest terms and completely rejects this policy.
The statement said this security justification is merely a pretext. The very state whose constitutional responsibility is to protect citizens’ lives and property is driving them from their land. If there really is a threat in the area, the state’s duty is to protect the people, not make them homeless. Driving three thousand people from their homes does not make them safe; it makes them refugees, jobless and homeless in their own homeland. Declaring a whole population a threat and depriving it of its homes is nothing but collective punishment. When people are removed and land is emptied in the name of protection, it is clear that the state’s target is not any threat but Baloch land.
The spokesperson said what is happening in Sardasht is not an isolated incident but part of an organised state policy under way in Balochistan, especially on the Makran coast. Gwadar’s land and coast are being sacrificed to so-called development projects and the interests of powerful circles, and the Baloch people are being removed as an obstacle in the way. Sometimes a plan to fence Gwadar city, sometimes checkpoints at every step, sometimes depriving fishermen of their own sea, sometimes restrictions on border livelihoods, and now evicting people from their homes: all these are different stages of the same policy. Its aim is to gain complete control over Baloch land and resources, make the Baloch a minority in their own home and hollow out the economic and social foundations of the Baloch nation. That is why we regard it as a direct state attack on Baloch survival.
He said evicting an entire population from its homes on a vague security justification is a blatant violation of Articles 9, 14, 15, 23 and 24 of Pakistan’s constitution as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement also prohibit any eviction carried out as collective punishment, that results in changing the ethnic composition of a population, or that is carried out in the name of development projects without a compelling public interest. We ask the state: under what law is Sardasht being emptied? Where is the written order? Who will compensate the victims for their losses? Who will guarantee their return? The state must answer these questions.
The statement said the Baloch Yakjehti Committee demands that the eviction from Sardasht be stopped immediately and all related orders withdrawn. Families already evicted must be allowed to return to their homes immediately and with dignity, and all their losses must be compensated. Likewise, the policy of evicting ordinary populations in the name of security across Balochistan must be ended at once, and no security, administrative or development project on Baloch land should be started without the free, prior and informed consent of the local population. We demand that national and international human rights bodies take immediate notice of the situation in Sardasht, send an independent fact-finding mission, and hold the Pakistani state accountable for these actions and bring it to justice.
The committee said the Baloch are the heirs of their land, not guests. Whether in the name of security or development, we reject every attempt to evict the Baloch from their land and will continue a peaceful political struggle against it on every forum. The people of Sardasht are not alone; the whole Baloch nation stands with them.
