Roof of the World rebels against Pakistan,
Aljazeera
Gilgit,
Pakistan - Escalating protests in villages perched on the "Roof
of the World" - a mountainous territory disputed between Pakistan and
India - have exposed deep animosity towards Islamabad.
After
67 years of control by the Pakistani government, many local people want the
country to either accept them as a new province - or grant them independence.
Pakistan's
authorities have responded to the unrest - sparked by poor public services and
anger at corruption - with a brutal crackdown.
"The
problem is in the system - it's a colonial system. The laws come from Islamabad
and we have to live under them," Nazir Ahmed, a local lawyer who helped
organise the protests, told Al Jazeera.
'Massive corruption'
The
two hundred thousand residents of Ghizer district now have an ambulance, a
crucial service in a region where the nearest hospital is a precarious five hour drive along narrow roads hugging cliff faces
thousands of feet above fast-moving rivers.
Two
weeks ago, hundreds of residents converged to besiege government offices,
demanding that officials provide an ambulance and basic medical facilities.
Ghizer
has no surgeon or gynaecologist, and just one female health worker.
Similar
unrest has erupted in villages across Gilgit-Baltistan in protests that began
with calls for an end to government corruption.
"There
is massive corruption, and no one here is answerable," said Ahmed, who
adds that the struggle for better medical facilities is just the beginning.
The
protests have been met with a brutal crackdown by authorities, who are using
special courts to prosecute 'terrorists' and who have jailed hundreds on
charges of sedition and 'terrorism'.
In April, hundreds of thousands of protesters
held an 11-day sit-in in Gilgit's legislative assembly after Islamabad
threatened to end a wheat subsidy established in 1972 to match a similar
package in India-administered Kashmir.
The protesters won back the subsidy but their
other demands, including self-rule for Gilgit-Baltistan, have yet to be met.
"Pakistan is seeking that the United Nations
solve the Kashmir dispute, and is unwilling to officially integrate
Gilgit-Baltistan into its political system," said Ahsan Ali, the head of
the Gilgit-Baltistan High Court Bar Association, and an expert on
constitutional law in the region.
Disputed territory
The
Roof of the World is part of a pre-1947 Kashmir, claimed by Pakistan and India
and home to the only land route to the Indian Ocean for Pakistan's closest ally
in the region, China.
The territory is
home to 12 of the 30 highest peaks on Earth, and its massive glaciers are the
source of water for most of the Indian subcontinent.
Since independence
from Britain in 1947, Pakistan and India have fought several wars over the
status of Gilgit-Baltistan - part of the Pakistan-administered Kashmir - and
the rest of disputed Kashmir to its east.
According to
binding resolutions from the UN, a plebiscite is to be held to determine
whether the region is to join India or Pakistan, or become an independent
state, but this has yet to happen, leaving millions in legal limbo.
Pakistan has not
constitutionally integrated Gilgit-Baltistan into its political system because
it believes the area could one day prejudice the plebiscite vote to
settle the Kashmir dispute with India.
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This legislative assembly...we feel
is powerless. All the power is in Islamabad. Until this [Advisory] Council in
Islamabad, which has all the power... until their power is transferred to the
[Legislative] Assembly here, we feel the problems here cannot be solved.
Afrasiab Khan
Khattak, Senator
and head of Senatorial committee on Human Rights
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No taxation without
representation
Ghizer district is
an unlikely place to find such animosity towards Islamabad as it is the home to
12,000 soldiers in an elite division that specialises in high-altitude warfare.
Nearly 500 have died fighting India since 1999, manning border posts in the highest battlefield on earth.
Nearly 500 have died fighting India since 1999, manning border posts in the highest battlefield on earth.
Islamabad has also
spent billions of dollars building infrastructure in the area like the
Karakoram highway, which links remote mountain communities and provides a
reliable land route to China.
Yet locals receive
no revenue from customs duties with China, or the sales tax collected by
Pakistan, which generates up to $550m in annual revenue and is destined
entirely for Islamabad.
The Awami Action
Committee (AAC), a coalition of 23 religious and political groups behind the
current protests, is demanding that there be "no taxation without
representation".
Stretching 28,000
square miles, and home to 2 million people, the region is not even mentioned in
Pakistan's constitution, a fact that irks young activists like Sajjid Rana, 19,
who says textbooks only refer to it as "the land of glaciers".
If Gilgit-Baltistan
gained self-rule, Rana would like to see it become a crossroads for trade
between India and Central Asia, as it was for thousands of years before its
western and eastern borders were closed under Islamabad's foreign policy
priorities.
"A lot of
people care about the region, but no one cares about the people," Shabbir
Hakimi, a Shia-cleric who helped mobilise thousands for the April sit-ins, told
Al Jazeera.
"As Muslims,
we care about Kashmir, but give us our rights, make us like Kashmir, or let us
go altogether."
Unlike the rest of
Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which has its own constitution,
democratically-elected legislature, and independent judiciary, Gilgit-Baltistan
was long governed by a federally-appointed civil servant who could impose
collective punishment on local tribes.
In 2009, Islamabad
granted the territory largely symbolic autonomy under a Legislative Assembly
whose members are elected, and an Advisory Council, most of whose members are
selected by the federal government.
"Islamabad is
basically running the show," said Nawaz Khan Naji, an elected member of
the 33-seat Legislative Assembly. "We have stacks of resolutions we have
passed that have not been acted upon."
In 2012, the
Legislative Assembly passed a resolution asking for Gilgit-Baltistan to be
turned into a province, but the Advisory Council, headed by the Pakistani prime
minister, ignored it.
Likewise key powers
over trade, tourism and natural resources remain effectively under Islamabad's
control and judges in Gilgit-Baltistan are appointed and dismissed at the
discretion of a federal minister.
"We call it a
21st-century colony," said Israr-ud-Din Israr of the Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan.
"All powers
are with Pakistan, and we cannot make laws ourselves, for our own
interests."
"This legislative
assembly...we feel is powerless," Senator Afrasiab Khan Khattak, who heads
a Senatorial committee on Human Rights, told reporters after a fact-finding
trip to Gilgit-Baltistan in April.
"All the power
is in Islamabad. Until this [Advisory] Council in Islamabad, which has
all the power... until their power is transferred to the [Legislative] Assembly
here, we feel the problems here cannot be solved."
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Pakistani Taliban claim attack on foreigners in Gilgit-Baltistan
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Harsh crackdown
The narrow roads
throughout Gilgit-Baltistan are littered with checkpoints, manned by
paramilitary soldiers and police who question all travellers.
In April, police
climbed the cliffs overlooking the narrow highway near the village of
Sikandarabad to drop giant boulders on to the roadway in an unsuccessful
attempt to keep protesters from reaching the Gilgit sit in.
But blocked roads
are not the only obstacle protesters face, with special courts set up to
prosecute 'terrorism' suspects now being used against political activists.
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Picturesque
Ghizer river, from which the valley and district take their names. [Umar
Farooq / Al Jazeera]
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More than 250
people have been tried in the anti-terrorism courts, alongside the 300 or so
political cases that have been held in conventional criminal courts.
Iftikhar Hussain,
34, has been in a Gilgit city prison awaiting trial in an anti-terrorism court
for nearly three years, even though the special courts are required to sentence
convicts within 90 days of an arrest.
He is one of 36 men
charged with 'terrorism' and 'sedition' stemming from a 2011 protest by locals
demanding compensation promised to them by Pakistan after a massive landslide
had destroyed their villages.
When police trying
to clear the protest killed two men, riots erupted across the entire region and
locals destroyed more than 17 government buildings including police stations.
Hussain, who says
he was not involved in the riots, was one of more than 100 people arrested.
Most of the other suspects arrested with Hussain have been released.
He says that for
nearly a month he was tortured by investigators who included officers from
Pakistan's intelligence agencies.
"We always
raised our voices over local problems in our areas, simple things," says
Hussain, who is a member of the Karakoram National Movement, a party advocating
for self-rule.
"They don't
like this, so they call it sedition."
As always
authorities deny having tortured Hussain.
"[Hussain] is
accused of serious violent crimes, " a senior Gilgit District police
officer, who declined to be named, told Al Jazeera when asked about
the allegations. "He was not tortured," he stated.
Source: Aljazeera
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