The people of Balochistan have announced the 25th of January as the “Baloch Genocide Day”, since this day commemorates the gruesome discovery of over 100 mutilated bodies of Baloch in Tootak, Balochistan, in 2014. These people had been forcibly disappeared by Pakistani intelligence agencies, paramilitary and their death squad militias. This tragic event has left an indelible scar on the collective memory of the Baloch nation, causing immense pain and suffering for every Baloch family, mother, sister, brother, father, and innocent children. The mass graves in Tootak are a testament to this atrocity as well as the struggle for justice, identity and existence of the Baloch people.
This struggle that is being led by people all over the Middle East for decades unites them under a longing for a Democratic Nation. The people of North-East Syria and together with freedom fighters from all over Kurdistan liberated the city of Kobanê from the so-called Islamic State, after it was encouraged to seize it by the Turkish state. Thousands of them fell martyr in this war and made it a victory for the people over the forces of occupation. The people of Balochistan and Kurdistan are connected in their suffering as well in their struggle. As a symbol of this connection, representatives of the Democratic Youth Council of Syria, Nadiya Yousef and Nasser Nasero, extended their solidarity for the Baloch people through a video message.
On this occasion it might be important to look deeper in the history and the struggle that is connecting both of those people.
When the old empires in the Middle East in the 19th century dissolved, or rather were destroyed by the rising imperialism, they drew borders and established nation states to exploit the countries of the region and bring the people under control. A few elites became the beneficiaries of this system, and while some peoples were infected by the disease of nationalism, there were others whose countries were divided, their language was banned and their identity denied. At the same time, the colonial powers attempted to unite with existing feudal structures to erase the strength of women from the society and tried to merge with the feudal class under the ideology of patriarchy.
While Kurdistan was divided between four states, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, Balochistan suffered a similar fate with the founding of the state of Pakistan in 1948. The country and its people were divided between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. For the imperialist states, only calculations of political influence, raw material profits and trade routes played a role. For the people, it meant that their thousands of years of heritage and culture were declared non-existent, underdeveloped or backward by law. While their lands and work made the masters of the new nation states rich, they themselves suffered hunger and disease. In the times of the cold war, the USA started to build up radical Islamic militias in the regions to counter what they considered the socialist threat. With the rise of these groups, again women and their freedom became the main target and the power over women the tool to tie men to Islamist agenda, splitting the society once again.
But thousands of years of social identity, resistance and life in tribal confederations could not be easily destroyed even by a hundred years of cultural and physical genocide. And so in both Balochistan and Kurdistan, not only an awareness of the oppression developed, but also a connection to the values of freedom and equality and a popular movement based on these values. Attempts to undermine these through religious fundamentalism or collaboration were also unsuccessful.
Thus these two regions and their peoples, which people tried to bury in history, became pioneers for a Middle East of peoples; for a Middle East that, through its own strength and based on its own heritage, realizes a free and equal life, beyond fundamentalism, the oppression of women and imperialism.
Today, the region is once again in a war in which the system of capitalist modernity is trying to assert its influence in the long term. Millions of human lives have been sacrificed for this over the decades, regimes are being overthrown, terrorist groups are being formed and people are being driven to flee or assimilated. The freedom struggle of women spread under the slogan Jin Jiyan Azadî over the whole region and is making the ideological cage of the society break bit by bit. To counter this spark of freedom, once again Jihadist groups and regimes are being implemented.
But unlike a hundred years ago, the peoples of Balochistan and Kurdistan have built political, social and self-defense structures that not only make resistance to attacks and genocide possible, but with which their own political, democratic projects of self-determination can be built and sworn in. The peoples of these regions are thus making an immeasurable contribution to a Middle East of peoples in which, after centuries of oppressive empires, imperialist intervention and fundamentalist dictatorships and gangs, the option of self-determination, freedom for women and peace between peoples can be realized. With the emphasizing the role of women in the liberation of the people, Rêber APO showed a way to overcome the ideology of hierarchy and oppression at its roots and with this break the chain that have been tightened around the societies of the Middle East. With the strength of women and the ideas of justice, empathy and peaceful coexisting that it comes with it, the ideological basis of the old rulers are being dried out. The women’s voices that made themselves audible through their struggle are calling for a free life of free people in free lands and become the vanguard of the fights for democracy and liberation. Great sacrifices have already been made for this dream and those who believe in this dream give their lives for it every day.
In order to build this future together, the youth see themselves as having a particular responsibility to build the brotherhood of peoples and a Middle East of democratic nations. In this spirit, members of the Syrian Democratic Youth Council have formulated a message of greeting to the fighting people of Balochistan:
Nasser Nasero (Co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Youth Council) and Nadiya Yousef (Spokesperson for the young women’s office at the Syrian Democratic Youth Council) expressed their solidarity with the following words:
This is in solidarity for the youth and people of Balochistan. We see today that in the whole world a lot of oppressed people, face the same problems. One of those are the people of Balochistan. It’s a people that saw a lot of pain just as the people of Kurdistan. We, as Syrian youth, as the Syrian people, as the people of Rojava Kurdistan in particular, with all our components, support the Baloch people. We say: The right of the Baloch people is a genuine right, the right of all genuine peoples of the region to live with their own language, their own identity, their own existence, their own culture. The people of Balochistan face oppression by Pakistan and at the same time the state of Pakistan sells out their land, abducting their youth and commits all kind of atrocities on the people and especially the youth of Balochistan. As youth of Rojava (West Kurdistan) we condemn these attacks, because we also face the same pain. As Kurdish people our rights were taken from us, our identity was denied, our language was denied. Because of this we can say that our pain is one. On this basis we stand in solidarity with the people of Balochistan and their legitimate protests for claiming their culture, their language, to defend their land and stand up against this system. Indeed, as Rêber APO (Abdullah Öcalan) says: The rights of every society have their original rights to exist, they have the right to identity, they have the right to culture, just as we see that our struggle at the level of Kurdistan is ensured by the thoughts and ideas of Rêber Apo, we see that if the people of Balochistan ely on the thoughts and ideas of the Democratic Nation that lived together, a free cohabitation, a genuine cohabitation that takes its rights in general, it will be a great step towards victory. We are with you and we support your legitimate protests and we remember all the martyrs that fell for the sake of their homeland, to defend their rights and their land and gave their life. We say the Kurdish people and the Baloch people are brothers and until both of our nations gain their rights, we will never stop to struggle and to resist and we as Kurdish people and Baloch people will be in solidarity with each other.