KARACHI, Sept 17: Prominent Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, who is also the chief of the Marri tribe, has ruled out any possibility of talks with the government, saying there can be no talks between ‘oppressors and oppressed’.

In a recorded video-tape played at a meeting held in Chakiwara on Sunday, he claimed that before Pakistan came into being, Balochistan ‘was a sovereign state, forcibly occupied and turned into a colony”. The meeting was attended by a large number of Baloch youths.

“We have never accepted this colonial status,” he added.

He said that successive governments had launched military operations in the province, but its people had always offered resistance.

He said that the Baloch would never compromise on their basic rights and would continue struggle till they were recognised as a ‘free nation.’

He asked the Baloch youth not to be misled by fanciful ideas of democracy, saying that democracy was for people who were free to decide about their future.

The Baloch leader said that the rulers talked about development and blamed three sardars for the trouble in Balochistan but there was no development in the areas where the sardari system did not exist, like Mekran, Kharan and Bela.

Earlier, speakers representing different political parties paid tribute to Nawab Akbar Bugti and his sacrifices and condemned the ongoing military operation in Balochistan.

They criticised the legislators who had threatened to resign from the assemblies in protest against the killing of Mr Bugti, but later took a U-turn on the pretext of Hudood laws or left the decision to resign to the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy.

They also criticised an ethnic party which, they said, was fomenting ethnic feelings in Karachi.