Pakistan families march 700 km for missing relatives

After 700 grueling kilometers of walking across scorched, arid plains, some two dozen women from Pakistan's troubled southwestern Baluchistan province are nearing the end of their march to seek justice for missing loved ones. For nearly a month they have walked for brothers, sons and husbands who have disappeared, allegedly at the hands of Pakistan's security services. Tired of waiting for justice -- or even news of their loved ones' fate -- the women have undertaken an unprecedented march from provincial capital Quetta to the southern port city of Karachi, some 700 kilometers (430 miles) away. On Thursday they reached Hub, the last town of the huge, impoverished province before Karachi. "There is no other way to raise our voice except this march," said Khadija Baloch, the sister of a missing youth, her infant daughter in her lap as she looked around with piercing bright eyes. Baluchistan, the size of Italy and rich in copper, gold and natural gas, is Pakistan's largest but least populous province. It is also the least developed, which has exacerbated a long-running ethnic Baluch separatist movement that wants more autonomy and a greater share of its mineral wealth. The latest armed insurgency rose up in 2004 and separatist groups still regularly carry out attacks on Pakistani forces. Human rights groups have accused Pakistani security forces and intelligence agencies of serious abuses, particularly kidnapping and killing suspected Baluch rebels before leaving their bodies by the roadside. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 300 people have suffered this fate -- known as "kill and dump" -- in Baluchistan since January 2011. The security services deny the allegations and say they are battling a fierce rebellion in the province, which is also an important smuggling route for heroin from Afghanistan. The brother of Farzana Mujeeb Baloch, Zakir, was the leader of a Baluch student movement backing "freedom" for the province. In June 2009 he disappeared and the family heard nothing until 2011 when another activist arrested with him was released. "But for the last two years we have no idea where he is. I'm afraid he is a victim of 'kill and dump'," she told AFP. "It is my struggle to get my brother released. I have made a thousand protests in the last four years but no-one listens to me." The march was the idea of former banker Mama Qadir Baloch. Some 20-25 women heard his call and joined the walk, some with children in their arms, their feet clad in cheap plastic sandals ravaged by the hard road and photos of the "disappeared" in their hands. Qadir's son went missing and in 2011 he found him. "One of his arms was broken, he had been shot three times, one in the head and two in the chest. His back had been burned with hot iron rods," he said. "In Baluchistan the security agencies and the army kidnap students and militants every day. Not a day goes by when Baluch are not targeted." Last year the Supreme Court quizzed lawyers for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) over missing persons in Baluchistan, a rare challenge to Pakistan's powerful spy agency. But for the families of the missing, the quest for answers goes on and for those who know the fate of their loved ones, the hope that others may have a happier outcome sustains them. Salma Baloch, the widow of Ghulam Mohammad, an activist whose body was found dumped in 2009, said: "He has gone but there are many fellow Baloch who are in the custody of the agencies. "And I want that the same thing should never happen to any other family."