Pak turning Gwadar into open prison on China’s order
looking the Gwadar port. Members of Balochistan freedom groups had stormed the highly guarded hotel on 11 May, which at the time was frequented only by senior Chinese and Pakistani officials who were engaged in the CPEC projects. In the firefight, which lasted for several hours, eight people, including three hotel infiltrators, were killed. Sources said that of the three attackers, two had entered the city through sea route.
This incident had massively irked the Chinese leadership, which had questioned the capabilities of the Pakistan government— which has already raised and deployed a special force of 15,000 men named “Special Security Division” (SSD) comprising 9,000 Pakistan Army soldiers and 6,000 para-military forces personnel to guard Chinese assets in the Balochistan region at the cost of Pakistani Rs 0.5 billion—to protect the Chinese from the Baloch freedom fighters, who, despite numbering in thousands and armed with mostly rudimentary weapons, have been able to target CPEC projects at regular intervals.
Locals, who spoke to The Sunday Guardian, quoting official sources, said that in the coming few years, Chinese and Punjabis will be settled in the region so as to bring a democratic change and reduce the ethnic Baloch to a minority.
“Deputy Commissioner of Gwadar, Major (retd) Abdul Kabir Khan has been telling us that this fencing is being done to protect the local Baloch. Protection from whom? The truth is that securing Gwadar city is the first step to bring in a demographic change in the region so that ‘outsiders’ can feel safe and start settling here. As per local officials, only outsiders will be allowed to stay in these fenced regions in the coming years, with the locals being issued hourly permits to enter the city,” a
Gwadar-based junior level government official said.
Naseem Baloch, Organiser of the Baloch National Movement (BNM) Diaspora Committee, told The Sunday Guardian that the local Baloch living in Gwadar believe that by fencing Gwadar, the Pakistan Army was planning to carry out demographic changes. “The life of an ordinary Baloch is very hard in the region. There are police check posts every 200 metres where the locals are humiliated and assaulted for no reason. When the fencing comes up, it will become very difficult for the Baloch to step out or get into Gwadar.”