A few days back the affected people of Diamer Dam took to the streets against government's failure to fulfill its promises made with them. As the protesters were holding the rally, the police and administration mismanaged it due to which the participants started pelting the office of assistant commissioner Diamer. In retaliation, the police swoop on the protesters, baton charged and tortured them. Besides, seven protesters were arrested and cases under different acts registered against 30 others on the occasion.

Who were these protesters and what were they demanding? Why they were beaten back and tortured. To answer these, we have to go into the depth of the matter and see the issue from its different perspectives.

Due to corruption, mismanagement bad governance, and widespread irregularities for the last many years, Pakistan has been facing a number of crises, among them energy shortage being the severe one. Its economy has become so fragile that there seems no remedy to put it on track again. Government departments have no money to pay their electricity bills while the circular debts of the power generating companies have soared so high that oil companies have stopped supplying them fuel. Moreover, lack of maintenance in water reservoirs, poor arrangements to store water and changes in the volumes of rivers due to climate changes have badly affected availability of water in the country. And the final blow has been coming from India's continuous building of small and big dams in the rivers entering Pakistan from Kashmir. These are some of the reason, hydel-electricity production starts reducing to a few hundreds megawatts with the start of summer against the rising demand.

It is also a fact that Pakistan is nota nation but a cluster of different nationalities, each feeling pride in identify itself through its own nationality and tribal affiliation rather than a Pakistani nation. Due to these nationalistic frictions, Pakistan could not construct a single dam for he last many decades and the issue of Kalabagh dam is one such example where one nation did not allow the other to take benefits of the planned water reservoir and it became an issue of life and death for it. In such a situation, it was naturally an easy option to construct a network of dam in Gilgit-Baltistan which has abundant of rivers and suitable geography to build water reservoirs. Not only this, Gilgit-Baltistan is also suitable for many other reasons for Pakistan's designs. As the region is not a part of Pakistan politically, constitutionally, it was very easy for Islamabad to fulfill its plans without taking care of any political or other pressure, because in this region neither it has to follow any human rights nor to face any political forces. Besides, Islamabad can also get cheap labor force on its own terms as international labor laws are not applied in this constitution-less region of the world. Of the water reservoirs Pakistan has so far built two of very important. Turbella dam was construction after the Indus Water Treaty with India while Mangla dam built in Mirpur, Azad Kashmir, was built in the 50s. The planning for this dam was made by the British before partition of the subcontinent. In this regard, the British had entered into an agreement for the construction of the dam with the then ruler of Kashmir Maharaja Hari Singh. But after parturition, the British government assisted Pakistan in building the dam but ignored the agreement earlier signed with the state of Kashmir. Under the agreement signed with the Maharaja, it was agreed that to rehabilitate the people of Mirpur, Dadial and other localities displaced from the construction of the dam, Sialkot then in British India, would be made part of Kashmir and all the affected people would be rehabilitated there. As such, the Maharaja has agreed to the construction of the dam only after ensuring the full rehabilitation of the residents of areas that were to be submerged due to the building of the dam. 

However, later the agreement was put into the dustbin because after Pakistan came into being Sialkot became its city while Mirpur was made part of 'Azad Kashmir'. Under the new accord during the era of Ayub Khan, the displaced people of Mangla were allotted land and rehabilitated in different parts of Pakistan while each affected person from Mirpur was given British nationality. Besides, the affected people of Turbela dam were also given huge compensation and rehabilitated.

After looking at the rehabilitation of these two dams, when we examine what would be in stock for the affected people of Diamer dam it gives a very uncertain picture with no prospects for the would-be affected masses. Though the government of Pakistan has directed Wapda to pay market arte compensation to the affected people for their houses, land, cattle and other properties, ground realities show that so far the people have not been paid compensation s promised to them nor there is so far any step taken for their rehabilitation. More importantly, Gilgit-Baltistan is also being deprived of the royalty after the completion of the dam and the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is set to reap the benefit because under a conspiracy the power houses of the dam are to be built in a small village called Bhasha which has been included in KPK.

The worst injustice and human rights violations have also been seen in the recent days when the affected people launched a protest demonstration for not being paid the promised compensation for their land and were brutally beaten and tortured by the police outside the office of the assistant commissioner Diamer. 

It is a fact that the construction of the Diamer Dam in Gilgit-Baltistan is against all international norms and laws. Pakistan should understand the fact that it cannot impose its will on the people of the region. It should also understand that no nation can tolerate such injustices and humiliations for so long, as there is a limit to anything. If Islamabad needs to build dams in Gilgit-Baltistan to meet its energy requirements, it would have to take the people of the region into confidence and rehabilitate the affected families properly.