GENEVA, NOV 23 (DNA) – The multi-billion dollar China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) not only poses a threat to any community, but to the entire region, says Ali Akbar Mengal, a Baloch activist.

Beijing believes this economic corridor is important link to its larger Silk Road Initiative to enhance economic cooperation between Asia and Europe. However, in Pakistan’s Balochistan province the locals are opposing the project by calling it a strategy to exploit the resources and destroy the ethnic culture.

Balochistan is the home to the deep water port of Gwadar – the key strategic interest behind the construction of road and rail infrastructure that will connect China’s Xinjiang – home to the oppressed Uyghurs – to the Arabian Sea. Balochistan is one of the resource-rich regions in South Asia but its inhabitants live in abject poverty.

The province has natural resources worth over a trillion dollar including gold, copper, black pearl, oil, coal, natural gas and other reserves. Despite all, the human development index of Balochistan is lowest in all over Pakistan. There are no hospitals and colleges for the welfare of indigenous people.

Pakistan’s campaign to implement CPEC has been ruthless, with local inhabitants forcefully cleared and any voice of dissent silenced. Paramilitary and state agencies have for years systematically violated human rights, among which numerous cases of enforced disappearances, abductions and extrajudicial killings.