KARACHI: Massive protests have erupted in Port City of Gwadar in Pakistan to unnecessary checkpoints, severe water and electricity shortages and threats to the livelihood of illegal fishing, part of a developing counter-attack in the country against the project The belt project and the Chinese multibilion-dollar road.
Protests organized by workers from several political parties, civil rights activists, fishermen and caring citizens have been going on for a week at the Y Chowk on Port Road in Gwadar, a coastal city in the province of West Baral Balochistan.
Protesters demand the elimination of unnecessary security checkpoints, the availability of drinking water and electricity, eviction of large fish trawlers from Macran Beach and the opening of the border with Iran from Panjur to Gwadar, Jang’s newspaper reported on Sundays.
The head ‘gave the right to Gwadar’ Rally Maulana Hidayat Ur Rehman said the protest would continue until their demands were fulfilled, stressed that the government had not been sincere in resolving local community problems living in the region.
Rehman strongly criticized the government in the past for failing to resolve the basic problems of the Gwadar people.
“We demand gwadar rights, which are seized by the authorities and people even lose basic needs.
The fishermen cannot get their livelihoods because big trawls are allowed to fish on Makran Beach,” he said at the public meeting last month.
Rehman said despite building a sea port in Gwadar, people in the city were still unemployed and the government did nothing about it.
“This is an insult to the sons of land when they were stopped at the checkpoint and asked about their existence,” he was quoted as saying by Tribune Express.
Protests are part of the growth of dissatisfaction with the presence of China in Gwadar, whose port is an integral part of the China-Pakistan economic corridor project of USD 60 billion (CPEC), a billion-dollar multi-billion-dollar project and road initiative (BRI).
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India has protested to China over CPEC because of the across Kashmir Pakistan (POK).
The large infrastructure project connects the Xinjiang Province of China with Gwadar Port in Pakistan Balochistan Province.
The Gwadar port has long been described as a gem on CPEC Crown, but in its process, this city has become a manifestation of a security state.
The priority of the authorities is directed to secure the port and additional interests; Welfare for those who this area count a little house.
Far from the port became a sign of economic boom, the opposite had occurred, the Dawn newspaper reported on Friday.
The existing privacy has deepened; Folk mobility is limited by security forces and there are questions that are unreasonable to their activities.
Many say they were made to feel like strangers on their own land, he said.
Increasing the misery of a large number of fishermen among Populaca, the government, they complained, had issued a license to Chinese trawlers for fishing on the beach.
Their small boats cannot compete, as a result from which their livelihoods are squeezed.
This is a petri dish from dissatisfaction where it has straightened up protests recently, he added.
Balochistan is home to long-term violent rebellion, and the presence of China in Gwadar has been the cause of many social riots and causes anti-Chinese sentiment.
It has also provided Fillip to the Baloch militant guerrilla group, which has carried out terrorist attacks in protests for CPEC projects.
This year in August, a suicide bomber attacked the car accompaniment that brought Chinese personnel at the Gwadar East Bay Expressway project where a Chinese was injured and two local children were killed.
The Chinese Embassy after the incident asked the Pakistani government to improve security for CPEC projects and Chinese personnel working on it.
In October last year, gunmen killed at least 14 people near Ormara on the coastal highway after calling on a convoy of vehicles traveling from Gwadar to Karachi and in 2019 five people, including a Pakistani navy soldier, was killed in an attack on the Luxury Mutiara .
Hotels in Gwadar.