Communist Party of Pakistan's statement on the escalating situation in Balochistan

The Communist Party of Pakistan strongly condemns the ongoing military escalation and violence in Balochistan. Once again, the ruling elites have responded to a political distress and national question with military operations, maximizing security powers and repression. This is nothing new but the same failed policy repeated for decades, always promising peace but delivering only more bloodshed, more enforced disappearances, more displacement and deeper alienation between the Baloch people and the state. Every military operation has bred greater mistrust, intensified resentment and reproduced the very conditions that fuel further conflict. 

This security-centric policy has been sustained by the systematic destruction of democratic politics. Just as in the rest of the country, the military establishment has repeatedly imposed puppet governments on the people of Balochistan through blatantly manipulated elections. These civilian administrations possess no meaningful decision-making authority. They function merely as a civilian façade for military hegemony, while all major political decisions remain concentrated in unelected institutions. Balochistan stands today at one of the most dangerous crossroads in its modern history because the ruling elites continue to refuse a political solution to what is fundamentally a political and national question. 

The recent Operation Shaban represents nothing more than the continuation of this seventy year old policy of repression. The Communist Party of Pakistan believes that no political solution is possible while the issue of enforced disappearances remains unresolved. For years, Baloch families have demanded to know the fate of their sons, daughters, brothers and fathers. They have marched peacefully, organised sit-ins, petitioned the courts and exhausted every constitutional avenue available to them, only to be met with silence. Enforced disappearances constitute one of the gravest political crises confronting Pakistan today. Every disappearance, every mutilated body and every act of collective punishment against the people of Balochistan does not restore order. Instead, it destroys the foundations of reconciliation and reproduces the very conditions that generate further violence and armed resistance. 

The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) was formed as a peaceful movement demanding justice for the victims of enforced disappearances in Balochistan. Since its formation BYC has faced sustained repression, protests suppressed, activists arrested and its leadership repeatedly targeted. The recent life sentence of its central leadership i.e. Dr. Mahrang Baloch along with Sibghatullah Shahji. She became the movement's leading voice after her father was forcibly disappeared and later killed. This sentence of peaceful activists marks a serious escalation in the criminalization of peaceful political dissent. Her conviction by an anti-terrorism court on charges of murder, sedition and terrorism is widely a politically motivated attempt to silence a non-violent movement. The Communist Party of Pakistan rejects the use of anti-terrorism laws and extraordinary courts to suppress democratic political activity. CPP believes that imprisoning peaceful political activists will not resolve the Balochistan question but It will only deepen alienation, harden mistrust and push a political solution further out of reach. 

The Balochistan question cannot be reduced either to only a matter of security or to one of human rights alone. It is rooted in decades of national oppression, unequal development and the systematic exploitation of the province's immense natural wealth while leaving the local populace ignored. Balochistan possesses vast reserves of natural gas, copper, gold and strategically important critical minerals that have become indispensable to the modern global economy. Its geographical position, linking South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and the Arabian Sea has made it one of the most strategically significant regions in contemporary geopolitics. Yet the workers, peasants, fishermen and youth of Balochistan remain among the poorest people of Pakistan's population. Wealth extracted from their land has enriched monopoly capital, feudal interests, multinational corporations and their local collaborators while the people themselves continue to face unemployment, underdevelopment, displacement and environmental destruction. 

This exploitation has become increasingly entangled in the rivalry between competing imperialist powers seeking control over strategic resources and critical minerals. Balochistan has become an arena where rival imperialist camps compete for influence over wealth that is central to the twenty-first century global economy. As China and the Western powers race to secure these resources including rare earth minerals, the Pakistani state has intensified militarisation and further displaced local communities in order to safeguard foreign and domestic investment. This has not brought development but has produced greater impoverishment, instability and resentment. Chinese state enterprises have long controlled projects such as Saindak, Dudda and others, while the United States and its allies are simultaneously seeking greater access to Balochistan's mineral resources including through initiatives such as the U.S. Export-Import Bank's financing under 'Project Vault' to facilitate American mining interests in the region. CPP believes that neither Beijing nor Washington represents the interests of the Baloch people but these competing imperialist powers seek only control over resources and strategic influence, while the people continue to bear the cost in poverty, repression and bloodshed. 

The Communist Party of Pakistan recognises that people can not be expected to indefinitely tolerate exploitation, political exclusion and state violence. At the same time, the Party states with equal clarity that military force, whether exercised by the state or embraced as the exclusive strategy of armed resistance, cannot resolve this important question. Decades of conflict have demonstrated that military victories do not produce political settlements. Lasting peace cannot emerge through repression or armed confrontation alone. It requires justice, democratic rights, national equality and the active participation of the people themselves in determining their own political, economic and social future.

The Communist Party of Pakistan Demands: 

- An immediate end to enforced disappearances, collective punishment and all violations of constitutional and democratic rights.

- The immediate production of every missing person before an independent court of law and their unconditional release.

- The immediate release of all political prisoners detained solely for the peaceful exercise of their democratic rights, including those prosecuted under anti-terrorism legislation for legitimate political activity and the withdrawal of all politically motivated cases against democratic activists.

- Independent judicial investigations into all allegations of extrajudicial killings, custodial deaths, enforced disappearances and other abuses.

- The full restoration of democratic freedoms in Balochistan, including the rights to organise, assemble, speak and protest peacefully, and an end to treating political dissent as a security threat.

- Democratic public ownership of Balochistan's natural resources, with their wealth directed towards education, healthcare, employment, housing, industrial development and public infrastructure for the people of Balochistan, rather than monopoly capital, feudal elites or foreign corporations.

Workers' Unity Against National Oppression and Imperialism 

The Communist Party of Pakistan calls upon workers, peasants, students, intellectuals and all democratic and progressive forces throughout the country to reject chauvinism, militarism and imperialist interference in Balochistan. The struggle against national oppression cannot be separated from the struggle against class exploitation. Only through the united struggle of the working people of every nationality, we can defeat the politics of repression, militarisation and division. 

CPP asserts once again that the present crisis will not be resolved through another military operation, nor through the continuation of an economic system that reproduces poverty, national oppression and perpetual conflict. The future of Balochistan cannot be secured through military domination, foreign investment protected by force or the silencing of democratic voices. It lies instead in democratic rights, national equality, economic justice, democratic public ownership of the country's wealth and the united struggle of workers and oppressed peoples against exploitation, oppression and imperialism.

Central Committee

COMMUNIST PARTY OF PAKISTAN

With our fraternal greetings,

The Communist Party of Pakistan
Central Secretariat: D-168, Naseem Nagar Phase-III, Hyderabad, Sindh. 
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