Rohrabacher Requests Information on Missing Baluch; Questions Administration Actions

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 30, 2012 Contact: Tara Setmayer                202-225-2415

Washington, D.C. – Today, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) sent a letter Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asking her to provide his office with information related to the case of a missing Baluch man named Zakir Majeed. Mr. Majeed, who was the Vice-Chairman of the Baluch Student Organization, was abducted on June 2009.
Human rights groups have recorded hundreds of cases of ethnic Baluch men disappearing or being killed by Pakistan’s security forces. The Pakistani government uses kidnapping and murder to repress Baluch who express a desire for autonomy.
Earlier this year, Rep. Rohrabacher raised the case of British citizen Noordin Mengal, who was the delegate to the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization for Baluchistan, and was denied entry to the United States by the Department of Homeland Security.
At the time, Rep. Rohrabacher wrote to Secretary Napolitano that the US Government needs to “end its partnership with the ISI in repressing the Baluchi people. We must allow eligible Baluchi leaders to come to the US… The people of Baluchistan are not the enemy of the US; they are our allies in the region.”
Rep. Rohrabacher, together with Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), introduced legislation on February 17, 2012 expressing the sense of Congress that the people of Baluchistan have a “right to self-determination and to their own sovereign country.”

Rep. Rohrabacher is Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee which held a hearing on Baluchistan on February 8, 2012.
http://rohrabacher.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=305076