KHUZDAR: Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) president Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal has said that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will turn out to be another Kalabagh dam because of wrong strategy of the government.

He said that the CPEC would deprive smaller provinces of their rights, adding that development based on dishonesty would not be acceptable to the people of Balochistan.

He was speaking at a public meeting held in memory of the victims of Aug 8 Quetta carnage in the Baba-i-Balochistan Football Stadium on Saturday.

Mr Mengal said that the CPEC project was only for Punjab. “The rulers are serving the interest of Punjab and they have no interest in the development of Balochistan.”

Out of $46 billion to be spent on the project, even $1bn would not be spent on Balochistan, he claimed. “This development can be for Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo and me but it will not benefit people of Balochistan.”

He said they could not accept development activities ignoring the province.

He paid tribute to the victims of the Aug 8 Quetta massacre and said that the suicide bombing had targeted lawyers who were providing justice to people of the province.

After the tragic incident, the rulers and security officials had blamed foreign intelligence agencies for the suicide attack, he said and asked: “If foreign agencies were involved in the Quetta carnage, who was behind the mass graves unearthed in Tutak? Who was involved in enforced disappearances of the youth whose bodies were recovered from the mass graves? Why has the report about the mass graves not been made public?”

The BNP-M leader alleged that Baloch people were being portrayed as traitors and terrorists in the textbooks of Punjab. “We accept this allegation but want to know the names of those traitors who were responsible for the creation of Bangladesh,” he added.

In an apparent reference to MQM-London chief Altaf Hussain, he said that people wanted to know who had ‘created’ the leaders now raising anti-Pakistan slogans and why action had not been taken against those who resorted to large-scale killings during the visit of former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to Karachi.

BNP-M secretary general Dr Jahanzeb Jamaldini said that the land of Jhalawan had rendered great sacrifices for the motherland but rulers wanted it to offer more scarifies.

“We have received around 3,000 bodies of our youths,” he said. “The youth of Balochistan do not want to die and all they want is to enjoy life like their counterparts in Punjab,” he added.

He said why the rulers could not open talks with Baloch people who were demanding their legitimate rights and their control over their resources.

“No one can be allowed to loot and plunder the resources of Balochistan which belong to its people,” Mr Jamaldini said.

Former senator Nawabzada Lashkari Raisani alleged that that state institutions were involved in sectarian and targeted killings in the province.

Asghar Khan Achakzai, the president of the Awami National Party’s Balochistan chapter, said that Baloch-Pakhtun unity would remain intact. In the past, he added, the alliance between Bacha Khan and Sardar Attaulah Mengal and Mir Ghous Bukhsh Bizenjo was broken by ‘invisible forces’.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2016