Press Releases
KARACHI: The Awami Workers Party (AWP) has condemned in the strongest possible terms the seizure of Karima Baloch’s body by security personnel and disallowing people from attending her funeral rites.
The Awami Workers Party President Yousuf Mustikhan, General Secretary Akhtar Hussain, Deputy Secretary Ismat Shahjahan, Organizing Secretary Javed Akhtar, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa President Akhundzada Haider Zaman, Balochistan chapter president Yousuf Kakar, Sindh President Bakhshal Thalho and General Secretary Javed Rajpar, Seraiki Waseb President Farhat Abbas, Punjab President Ammar Rashid, AWP UK President Dr Iftikhar Ahmed, AWPGB leader Baba Jan in their joint statement condemned the inhumane act of taking the corpse of Karima Baloch forcibly.
By doing so the rulers have exposed the killers of Karima, they said.
Karima Baloch’s body was taken into custody forcibly from Karachi airport, and taken to her native town Tump in Mekran after imposing a curfew, suspending internet and mobile services. People were prevented from receiving Karima Baloch’s body and attending the last rites.
Sadly, no media house dared to run tickers about this naked barbarism. Not even a politician from the mainstream ruling class parties issued a statement on this act, they said.
The AWP leaders said that in this hour of grief and anger, the party expresses solidarity with the heirs of Karima and will stand by them till they get justice.
The party leaders said that the Pakistani state seems afraid of corpses. They reminded that earlier the bodies of Hassan Nasir, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Nawab Akbar Bugti had not been handed over to their families. Now the state forcibly took Karima’s body into custody, suspended internet service in her hometown and put the area under lockdown before her last rites.
They likened the action to the British colonial rule and said that the Pakistani rulers were keeping alive the traditions of their imperialist masters. The act is reminiscent of the treatment meted out to Congolese revolutionary leader Patrice Lou Mamba and Bhagat Singh and his associates in the subcontinent.
The only purpose of such tactics is to somehow suppress the public sentiments arising from the martyrdom of these great revolutionaries. But the rulers must remember that such people can be annihilated physically, but they live forever in the hearts of the people. They appear in stories, folk tales, songs, poems and resistance movements.
Yousuf Mustikhan said that the state, on the one hand, had inflicted such misery and oppression on the Baloch youth and on the other hand, did not allow them to mourn on their own bodies and expect them to be loyal to this oppressive state.
It is unfortunate that a state that claims to be “Islamic” while depriving the aggrieved people of their right to respectfully bury the body of their loved ones. At a time when the wounds of the Baloch people need to be healed, more salt is being sprinkled on their wounds.
Sindh president Bakhshal appreciated the role of Karachi chapter comrades and Federal President Yousuf Mustikhan for expressing solidarity with the oppressed Baloch people and raising their voice on the injustices.
Bakhshal said that earlier political activists of Sindh and Balochistan were forcibly abducted but now even the dead are not safe. He said the AWP considers this barbarism a cowardly act.
Haider Zaman asked the authorities to provide justice to the family of Karima Baloch and stop state repression in Balochistan.
Former president of AWP Punjab Asim Sajjad Akhtar said that the rulers may bury the body but not the ideology. Akbar Bugti was killed and buried. And now Karima Baloch’s body seized and buried. “How will you kill the ideology that Karima Baloch inculcated among the youth,” he questioned.
The AWP leaders reminded the rulers that they have not been able to suppress the voices of the Baloch national movement through intimidation and repressive acts for seven decades. A new generation of women and youth has embarked on a journey to follow in Karima’s footsteps on new paths of struggle. Now, this caravan cannot be stopped by any kind of state repression.
Therefore, the rulers should stop the military operation and state repression in Balochistan and make efforts to address issues of people like the sense of deprivation, exploitation and poverty through dialogue.
He called on the governments of Canada, Sweden and Pakistan to conduct an impartial inquiry into the killings of Karima Baloch, Sajid Hussain and Arif Baloch and bring the perpetrators to justice.
Issued:
Information Secretary
Awami Workers Party