Gwadar rights movement leader threatens to march on Islamabad

KARACHI: Gwadar Rights Movement leader Maulana Hidayatur Rehman on Tuesday said that he had been preparing to march from Quetta to Islamabad for Balochistan’s rights along with one million people.

Addressing ‘Meet the Press’ at the Karachi Press Club, he said that Prime Minister Imran Khan had announced to hold talks with the angry Baloch people. He should talk to the people of Balochistan instead of people living in Switzerland.

He said that the state institutions should seriously think about why the people, who used to take part in the general polls, were carrying out insurgencies from the mountains, adding, “If I were not in Jamaat-e-Islami, I would also be in the mountains.” He maintained that propaganda was launched that “we are against the China Pakistan Economic Corridor while the fact is that CPEC does not even exist in Balochistan.” Rehman said that Orange trains and factories had been built elsewhere under CPEC but no roads, hospitals or schools were built in Balochistan.

He said residents of Balochistan are the richest people in the world in terms of resources “but we have to come to Karachi for the treatment of the minor diseases, such as fever.” He asked, “Why will we be against development?”

He demanded that Balochstian’s resources should be spent on its people first. Instead of giving development projects, thousands of security check- posts had been built after every few yards where residents were being humiliated on a daily basis.

He said tribal chieftains and feudal lords, who are part of the current Balochistan government, are equal partners in the destruction of the province. “All of them were also part of the provincial and federal governments of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Pakistan People Party in the past,” Rehman said. He said that Balochistan was not considered a province but a colony and its residents were considered as third-class citizens.

Maulana Hidayatur Rehman, who is also Jamaat-e-Islami Balochsitan’s secretary-general, rose to prominence after he recently led the mammoth protests in Gwadar for several weeks.