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Diaspora Baloch protest ‘media campaign’

LONDON: Senior Diaspora Baloch leaders have protested that a well-planned propaganda campaign was be

By Murtaza Ali Shah
May 09, 2011
LONDON: Senior Diaspora Baloch leaders have protested that a well-planned propaganda campaign was being run by the Pakistan government to malign their secular causes before the international community.
After a recent news report alleged that the recent successive attacks on Pakistan Navy buses in Karachi have come as a result of a nexus between the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) allegedly of Brahamdagh Bugti and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Mehran Baloch said the state machinery was in full action to discredit and slander the nationalist Balochistan movement which was only “indigenous” and was also a victim of the Taliban attacks.
Speaking to The News, Mehran, who is brother-in-law of Brahamdagh Bugti and has played a key role in Bugti’s recent arrival in Switzerland, said it beggared belief that the Baloch nationalists would make alliances with the extremist Taliban.
“First, Brahmdagh was linked with Afghanistan government and it was said that Afghan and Indian intelligence is helping him. Now that he is in Europe, he is being linked with Taliban to show to the western governments that he was a mad Taliban mullah. This is nothing but propaganda against the liberal Balochs,” said Mehran, who has spoken regularly at the European forums on the Balochistan issue.
“The world cannot be hoodwinked into believing that those Baloch who have historically fought religious and cultural militancy have all of a sudden become friends with their worst enemies, who are actually involved in Baloch pogrom. Brahmdagh has nothing to do with Taliban, he considers them criminals,” said Mehran.
Brahamdagh Bugti applied for asylum in Switzerland earlier this year. He has been strictly barred by his Swiss lawyers from making any statements while the government considers his asylum case. He is believed to have lived in Afghanistan prior to his arrival in Switzerland. Pakistani government has linked him with various sabotage activities inside Balochistan and considers him one of the most dangerous and anti-state elements.
But his name, along with other key exiled Baloch activists from the Mengal and Marri families including Hyrbyair Marri and Mehran Baloch has regularly popped up in media, showing alleged links with guerrilla movements struggling for Balochistan’s independence.
“Pakistan has made failed attempts to malign the secular Baloch nationalist movement internationally, but it is now more evident who is complicit in harbouring and colluding with militant fundamentalists, the likes of al-Qaeda and Taliban. The discovery of Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad speaks louder than any dirty campaign run against human rights defenders,” a leading London based rights campaigner Noordin Mengal told The News.