Pakistan families march 700 km for missing relatives

After 700 gruelling kilometres of walking across scorched, arid plains, some two dozen women from Pakistan's troubled southwestern Baluchistan province are nearing the end of their march to seek justice for missing loved ones.
For nearly a month they have walked for brothers, sons and husbands who have disappeared, allegedly at the hands of Pakistan's security services.
Tired of waiting for justice -- or even news of their loved ones' fate -- the women have undertaken an unprecedented march from provincial capital Quetta to the southern port city of Karachi, some 700 kilometres away.
Today they reached Hub, the last town of the huge, impoverished province before Karachi.

"There is no other way to raise our voice except this march," said Khadija Baloch, the sister of a missing youth, her infant daughter in her lap as she looked around with piercing bright eyes.
Baluchistan, the size of Italy and rich in copper, gold and natural gas, is Pakistan's largest but least populous province.

It is also the least developed, which has exacerbated a long-running ethnic Baluch separatist movement that wants more autonomy and a greater share of its mineral wealth.
The latest armed insurgency rose up in 2004 and separatist groups still regularly carry out attacks on Pakistani forces.

Human rights groups have accused Pakistani security forces and intelligence agencies of serious abuses, particularly kidnapping and killing suspected Baluch rebels before leaving their bodies by the roadside.
According to Human Rights Watch, more than 300 people have suffered this fate -- known as "kill and dump" -- in Baluchistan since January 2011.
The security services deny the allegations and say they are battling a fierce rebellion in the province, which is also an important smuggling route for heroin from Afghanistan.
The brother of Farzana Mujeeb Baloch, Zakir, was the leader of a Baluch student movement backing "freedom" for the province. In June 2009 he disappeared and the family heard nothing until 2011 when another activist arrested with him was released.