Nacro politics is a concept in which a population is colonized and their life and death is decided by the state. It means that the state decides that who she wants to be subjected to death.
In Balochistan, nacro politics is a state policy in which the population, living in Balochistan, is subjected to certain conditions that the indigenous masses feels precarious, insecure and prone to violence.
We can observe the forms of state’s nacro politics in Balochistan in various means, some of which, I have tried to mention here.
1: Enforced disappearances:
Baloch youth face daily forced disappearances by state’s law enforcement institutions, irrespective of their age and sometimes gender, without any accountability before a court of law. They, in fact, deny such illegal arrests. It is done to make the people insecure, that too within their homes, while the other angle of such unlawful arrests is to further the process of colonizing the minds of the people for creating a fearful atmosphere. Sometimes, such arrests even lead to the recovery of corpses of the same people.
2: Extrajudicial killings:
As mentioned earlier, extrajudicial killings after abductions are yet another form of the nacro politics. In the latest phase, there has been a slight change in the state’s killing policy: it firstly disappears the Baloch through force, and then releases them. After their release, they shoot them dead. Zakriya Baloch of Gwadar is the recent example of such killings.
Another form of extrajudicial killing is the fake encounter. Under this formula, the state institutions forcibly disappear the Baloch, torture them for months, and then kill them, showing a staged encounter which never happened. Balach Mola Bakhsh and several others are the fresh examples of such incidents.
Another one is targeting the Baloch teachers and scholars. The assassinations of Professor Saba Dashtyari, Professor Razzaq Baloch, Sajid Hussain, Rauf Baloch, Allah Dad Baloch, and the murder attempt of Shareef Zakir are the limelight. They are the parts of the state’s nacro politics.
3: Torture:
The forcibly disappeared Baloch are always treated with physical and mental tortures in the state’s secret cells. Those tortures are in the shape of beating with fits, sticks or other objects, electric shocks, burning the skin with cigarettes, iron or other hot objects, sleep deprivation, starvation and dehydration.
All these tortures are exposed to those Baloch who are in torture cells, as the biggest proofs are those who were once forcibly disappeared and released later on, narrating the stories or showing the torture marks on their bodies. We have also witnessed these tortures on the corpse found under bridges, forests or in canals.
4: Collective punishment:
We have also observed that villages and forests were burned in several regions of Balochistan as a collective punishment, victimizing persons and animals. Many times, security forces displace and force the villagers to migrate from several villages or towns to other places without rendering them any financial support and logical reasons. This trend went on its peak during Dr. Malik’s tenure in 2013 when he became the ‘Chief Minister’ of Balochistan. Only in Awaran, other 3000 houses and thousands of animals were burned.
5: Restrictions on mass movements and peaceful assembly:
Peaceful assembly and mass movement are fundamental human rights. In Balochistan, it is diverse. When the people come out on roads or initiate any movement, the so-called government calls for ban on peaceful assembly to create hurdles. Under this formula, article 144 is usually quoted, excusing of security concerns. This is nothing but a form of further suppression of Baloch voices.
To sum up, the above-mentioned are some few visible instances of state’s nacro-politics policy in Balochistan. It is contributing in giving birth to several human rights violations for the Baloch, while the state institutions seems fine with it.