Pakistan Navy has acquired close to 13,500 acres of land in Turbat and Dasht areas of Kech district in Balochistan's Makran division to the distress of local landowners and the ire of Baloch political activists, the Herald reports.
 
The landowners in Turbat have moved an application to the provincial government saying that they were not even informed before their lands were acquired and that the naval authorities paid them nothing in lieu of their lands, says a special report in the magazine's latest issue that hit the newsstands today (Sunday). “We only became aware [of the acquisition] when the navy started construction and we were stopped from visiting our lands,” says Shabbir Ahmed Dashti, a local landowner. For the last many months the landowners have been running from pillar to post to get their land back or at least get paid for it if there was no way to retrieve it from the navy, says the report.
 
The Herald investigations reveal that the land was acquired in a clear violation of the Land Acquisition Act. The law “states that any government department that wants to acquire private land for public purposes shall issue a public notification mentioning the land it wants to acquire and ensuring that the notification is posted throughout the area in which that land is situated. The law also provides that anyone including private landowners have the right to object to land acquisition within 30 days of the notification,” the report reads. None of these procedures were adopted in Turbat.
 
As a result of such land acquisitions, dissatisfaction and even anger towards the state are on the rise in the Makran division, the Herald says. “Graffiti directed against security forces has appeared on the walls of public and private properties in Gwadar, Pasni and Turbat and this year's Independence Day was observed as a day of protest in some areas of the division. Eyewitness accounts suggest that some angry protesters burned down the national flag as well as emblems of the security forces on August 14 in Gwadar, Punjgur and Kech districts, and instead reportedly hoisted what they call the flag of independent Balochistan on electricity and phone towers,” the report says.
 
“This is uncharacteristic of people living in Makran region,” it quotes Imam Bukhsh, a Baloch poet living in Gwadar, as saying. “The political leadership of the area has always sought a solution to Balochistan's issues through parliamentary and constitutional means,” he is reported to have said.