Dr Allah Nazar Baloch, founder of Baloch Students’ Organisation Azad (BSO-A) and leader of the Balochistan freedom struggle made an impassioned appeal to Elon Musk, who recently bought Twitter, to let the people of Balochistan highlight what atrocities they go through at the hands of Pakistan.
Allah Nazar, whose Twitter account has been disabled umpteen times at the behest of Pakistan, hoped that Musk, the new owner of the microblogging platform, would keep his promise for freedom of expression. Allah Nazar is not the only Baloch leader whose accounts have been disabled or withheld by Twitter on various grounds. Twitter under its earlier avtaar had routinely shadow-banned Baloch human rights activists and deplatformed Baloch who exposed Pakistan Army’s atrocities in occupied Balochistan.
BSO-A and several other such organisations are leading the people of Balochistan in their struggle for independence from Pakistan.
Pakistan has been illegally occupying Balochistan since 1948 and its forces have committed extreme atrocities on the people of the region. The Pakistan forces commit killings, rapes and ‘enforced disappearances’ in Balochistan but the Pakistani media hardly reports such developments.
Pakistan also prohibits the foreign media from reporting on such atrocities from Balochistan. Therefore, social media is the only means for the oppressed people of Balochistan to highlight what kind of atrocities they go through everyday and if social media too is controlled by players then a pertinent question of the survival of the oppressed minority rises.