The recently constructed Gwadar International Airport has raised alarm bells among Baloch nationalists as it has become the latest tool for the Pak Army’s sinister plans of demographic re-engineering in the resource-rich region.
Speaking at a fiery press conference on Wednesday, the central spokesperson of the Baloch Students Organization Azad (BSO-Azad) lambasted the multi-million dollar airport project as a “gateway for Punjabi and Chinese settler colonialism” in Pak-occupied-Balochistan.
“History teaches us that occupying forces always prioritize settlements and plundering the resources of occupied lands in the name of development,” the spokesperson said. “The Pak forces, using Chinese money, are already involved in killing, abducting and looting the Baloch youth. Now this airport lays the ground for an active demographic invasion.”
He warned that the true intention behind the airport was to turn the Baloch into a minority on their own soil by facilitating the influx of settlers from Punjab and China. “This settler project is an existential threat to the Baloch nation. We will resist it by any means necessary,” he declared.
The spokesperson pointed to the glaring injustice that while Gwadar’s local population lacks access to clean water, the Pak and Chinese regimes had jointly pumped in millions to build the airport aimed at serving their colonial objectives.
“If they really cared about the Baloch, they wouldn’t be trampling on our dignity daily. Our mothers and sisters face privacy violations, while our livelihoods from fishing are being robbed,” he said. “But their real motive is to turn our whole geography, especially Gwadar, into a military cantonment under their occupation.”
Gwadar Airport as Tool of Punjabi-Chinese Occupation
China and Pakistan are actually pursuing a policy to gain complete control over the Baloch geography due to its importance, and they want to turn the Baloch land, especially Gwadar, into their military base. China, which wants to emerge as a rising power against capitalism and investment in the world, on the other hand wants to maintain its military control in occupied areas of Balochistan by using the model of European occupations.
Due to the presence of barely a hundred Chinese in Gwadar, the entire area is under military siege. One can imagine the situation of military occupation when thousands of Chinese come to Gwadar and other parts of Balochistan.
Addressing the Baloch people at the end of the statement, he said that the Army is currently pursuing a policy based on intense warfare and occupation, and its main purpose is to eliminate the Baloch population from Pak-occupied-Balochistan and establish permanent Punjabi and Chinese occupation.
The spokesperson urged the Baloch masses to unite against the “Chinese imperialist designs” and not allow them a chance to gain ground in Balochistan. “Otherwise, the devastation the Chinese can inflict within months is far worse than what the Punjabi occupiers failed to do over 70 years.”
As Pak forces lay siege to Gwadar under the pretext of securing the handful of Chinese personnel already there, the airport looks set to intensify the brutal military occupation if the influx of Chinese settlers is allowed. Baloch resistance appears determined to turn this colonial venture into another festering crisis for Islamabad and Beijing.