ISLAMABAD, OCT 08 (DNA) – Human rights activists have, time and again, spoken about and highlighted the growing atrocities of Pakistan on the indigenous people of Balochistan.

Singing in a favourable tune with its economic partner, Pakistan has dismissed the United States’ concern over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and said that the project was for the betterment of the people in the region and beyond.

“The CPEC is a development and connectivity project for the betterment of the people in the region and beyond”, the Dawn quoted Foreign Office, as saying, in a statement.

“The international community should focus on human rights violations and heinous crimes committed by Indian occupation forces in Indian occupied Kashmir,” the statement further read.

The remarks by the foreign office have come after the US Defence Secretary James Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee, during a hearing that “the One Belt, One Road also goes through the disputed territory, and I think that it itself shows the vulnerability of trying to establish that sort of a dictate.”

On Saturday, China rebuffed the statement made by the Trump administration about the CPEC, citing that its OBOR initiative, which dictates the CPEC, was not directed against third parties.

“We have repeatedly said that the CPEC is an economic cooperation initiative that is not directed against third parties and has nothing to do with territorial sovereignty disputes and does not affect China’s principled stance on the Kashmir issue,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, in a statement.

Mattis had also told that in a globalised world, there are many belts and many roads, and no one nation should put itself into a position of dictating the ‘One Belt, One Road’.

China came up with its One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative in 2013.

The CPEC project comprises a network of railways, roads and pipelines that would connect Pakistan’s port city of Gwadar in the province of Balochistan, with the Chinese city of Kashgar in landlocked Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

The human rights activists have, time and again, spoken about and highlighted the growing atrocities of Pakistan on the indigenous people of Balochistan and deteriorating human rights situation as a result of the CPEC.