Necropolitics of ‘kill and dump’ of the Pakistani riyasat has been primarily resisted by subaltern working class young women, men and a few older Baloch activists such as Mama Qadeer and Mir Muhammad Ali Talpur. Just sixteen to twenty such people made the world aware of the brutality of necropolitics in Balochistan and set the stage for the activism of BYC today. Let me tell you the story of the Banuks, Mama Qadeer and the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons.
On a winter day in 2014 I set off from Lahore to join the Voice for Baloch Missing Person Long March, which had reached Jhelum. It was a three hour drive to catch up. Once there, I parked my car at a petrol pump and walked close to the front of the march, where Mama Qadeer was – as he is commonly known, his legal name being, ‘Abdul Qadeer Reki’. Mama was seventy-two year-old and was among the leaders of the march with the Banuks. The Banuks, young Baloch activists, had come to spearhead the march but also other Baloch political movements.
They marched slightly ahead of the rest of us, so that we formed a caravan of three parts. At the head were masked young Baloch volunteers who made sure that it was safe for the Marchers to proceed ahead on the road, which was a busy two-lane motorway. Behind them was a four-wheel cart, on which normally are sold snacks, fruit or vegetables, but here it was weaponized as a symbol of resistance to ‘kill and dump’. For on it were the pictures of activists, ‘disappeared’ by the riyasat of Pakistan – on this cart made visible and present. The cart was pushed by young Baloch masked volunteers, Mama Qadeer and the Banuks. Behind them, with a gap of ten yards or so, followed all the sympathizers. On this day there were 500 hundred or more of us. In Karachi, about 50 days earlier there had been ten thousand; in Quetta 90 days ago likewise thousands. Mama Qadeer and the Banuks, had by now walked 98 days across the country, on foot, carrying the pictures of their disappeared. Each day at 9 am they had got up to the stop where they had stopped on the road the night before and from there continued to march on foot until 5 pm in the afternoon or when it got too dark to carry on. From there they found whichever local activist who would host them for the night with shelter and food and the next day they set off again from the stop where they had ended their march the night before. They started in Quetta and had walked in this way to Karachi and were now onwards to Islamabad. Periodically, activists would join the march, as they did so they would start by throwing rose petals over Mama Qadeer and if they were female participants on the Banuks, as an honorific act. At these moments the caravan would stop. At just such a moment, Sangat, a young Baloch volunteer, noticed me. Excitedly, he asked if I wanted to meet Mama Qadeer, ‘of course’, I said. He led me to the front and in the thong of the slogans, of ‘ free zakir majeed’. ‘Free Asghar Bungalzai’, ‘we want justice’, ‘where are you UNO’…introduced me to Mama Qadeer. I bowed my head and was lost for words. Before me stood a saint.
Mama Qadeer is about 6 feet tall, and has a sturdy build and dark complexion, with white hair that still retains elements of black roots. He normally also sports a thin brittle moustache…
A saint is defined as someone who shows extraordinary moral courage in the face of persecution. A super-human, who sacrifices herself for the cause of the oppressed and helpless. ‘Saints’ are persecuted in their own time and only in the annals of resistance history and among the subaltern do they appear as they should, as superhuman, standing up for godly universal justice – that justice we feel in our bones. By this definition Mama Qadeer is a saint and persecuted. If we examine his work with the Voice for Baloch Missing Person this becomes clear.
The Voice for Baloch Missing Person (VBMP) was founded on 27th September, 2009. The three founders, Nasrullah Baloch, Farzana Baloch and Mama Qadeer, all have had relatives abducted by the military arms of the Pakistani State. Ali Asghar Bungalzai is the uncle of Nasrullah Baloch. He ran a tailoring shop called, ‘D’ French Tailors’, in Quetta. He had been a member of Khair Bux Marri founded organisation, Haq Tawar. He was picked first in 2000, and tortured. His torturers asked him to separate ways from Haq Tawar but Ali refused. Nonetheless, after electrocution and beatings for 14 days, he was released. His nephew Nasrullah was told all this by Ali after his release. After a few weeks’ rest, Ali returned to his work as a tailor and Nasrullah continued to meet him at his shop. However, both feared he would be picked up again. In 2001 he was picked up again. To date, Ali is missing.
Farzana Majeed Baloch, a student of MPhil English and a graduate at master level in Biochemistry, had her brother, Zakir Majeed Baloch, activist of BSO-A, abducted on June 8th 2009. He was abducted at gunpoint from the Mastung area of Balochistan. Since, then, his family has heard reports from other Baloch activists who have been in Pakistani torture chambers that they have seen Zakir also held there, in the first years of his abduction Zakir would cut off and send buttons from his shirt via comrades to his family to let them know he was alive. It has been nearly decades since his abduction and to date, he has not been released. The family had stopped receiving buttons or news of him many years ago.
Mama Qadeer’s Son, Jalil Reki Baloch was abducted from Saryab Road, Quetta, in broad daylight, in February 2009. Witnesses saw him run away from the intelligence agency people before having guns pointed at him, so he stopped, and was picked up and ‘disappeared’. Jalil Reki’s crime was that he was the general secretary of Baloch Republican Party, a small party that had a Baloch nationalist agenda. Mama Qadeer, campaigned for his release from the VBMP organisation platform, he went to the Pakistani courts, he set up camp with other missing person families outside Quetta press club, he lobbied politicians and met with military personnel who asked him to stop his campaign and then they would release his son. It was to no avail. On 24th November 2011, Mama Qadeer was told to come to identify a body which had been found by the police in a deserted spot in Mard area of Balochistan. At Turbat District Hospital, Mama Qadeer, saw his son’s dead tortured body. He made sure that Jalil Reki’s, four-year-old son, saw his father’s body so that he would not be in delusion about what had happened to his father and what the state was capable of. Mama Qadeer in an interview with Daily Tawar, an Urdu newspaper now shut down by the state’s repressive policies, described the body of his son, ‘I have seen Jalil Reki with my own eyes. He was shot in the head and there were three bullet wounds on his chest. His back had several burnt wounds from either cigarettes or hot irons and the finger of his left hand was also broken’.
Mama Qadeeer’s personal loss has not stopped him from continuing the work of fighting for other missing Baloch.
Given their shared experiences of having family members abducted and disappeared and noting that this was not just their fate but that of thousands of Baloch, they set up VBMPs. Nasrullah became the Chairperson, while Farzana and Mama Qadeer became joint Vice-chairpersons.
VBMP started off with a camp set-up outside Quetta Press Club but later moved to Karachi and Islamabad at times. The camp, till today, continues. It has stayed up for thousands of days now. Despite Mama Qadeer’s personal loss, he stands with the families of the missing and he can be found most days at the camp.
In a country of 250 million, we find only these few family members continue to support and call out this barbarism. As such, we need to pay attention to their acts of resistance and their camp, battles in the courts and long march as these are the few but important and historical weapons of resistance the ‘wretched of the earth’ have developed to combat, ‘kill and dump’ of a nuclear weaponed state with over a million military soldiers at its disposal.
