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Baloch and the CPEC
  • China-Pakistan Railway
    China-Pakistan Railway
The project, the fruit of friendship `sweet as honey and as deep as the ocean` between China and Pakistan, is actually part of a larger project Chinese, the program One Belt One Road (OBOR) which aims to reconstitute and broaden the ancient Silk Route. In particular, the CPEC consists in a series of motorways, railways and power stations that connect Kashgar, in Xingjang to Gwadar in Balochistan. According to the agreements made between Islamabad and Beijing, the chinese should build a new motorway between Karachi and Lahore, reconstruct the Karakoram Highway, build a pipeline from Iran to Gwadar, new power plants to meet the endemic shortage of energy in Pakistan, develop other sources of energy to coal and gas, build oil and gas pipelines in the country. Are already under construction eight hundred kilometers of optical fiber to develop communications in Gilgit-Baltisan which in its intentions should become a Special Economic Zone. And then there is the port of Gwadar, privileged window on the gulf and the Indian Ocean. The Chinese investment in the project is about fifty billion dollars and according to Pakistani will produce an increase of 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product in addition to creating thousands of jobs. The first Chinese ship has already arrived at Gwadar in Balochistan waving chinese flags together with those of Pakistan but, apart from the government, nobody believes the promises of Beijing. To build roads and infrastructure for the port, the land was expropriated but the owners have received no compensation. Not only: in Balochistan the promised jobs vanished into thin air, because workers have been mainly 'imported' from other provinces of Pakistan. In the province have been deployed 13,000 soldiers to 'protect' the Chinese workers and their investments. A further occupation for a region already military occupied. According to a report recently launched by the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the native population of Balochistan will be outnumbered by foreigners by 2024. Because of the chinese migration due to the Corridor but not only. At the moment, the ethnic Balochs are the 55% of the population of the province. The richest province in natural resources, the least populated and the least developed of the country. The report recommendend that :`the Government should provide a sense of security to the natives by including them in the legislative process, and by providing them with technical and vocational training to ensure their share in the economic sphere”. Instead, a 15 km corridor has been cleared of people along the road, to grant security for Chineses. And a special military force has been set in Gwadar to protect the ships.
Francesca Marino
  • Open Letter Balochistan To China
    Having little or no trust at all for the Pakistani Government, people of Balochi has written this open letter to China
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