European Parliament Vice-President Ryszard Czarnecki, in 2016, said in relation to the CPEC that "the grievances of the local Baloch community were being completely ignored, and anything interpreted as dissent, was being violently crushed". CPEC has resulted in "large-scale and systematic human rights violations perpetrated by the Pakistani army".[459] In 2017, GM Bhagat, an Umerkot-based researcher, said that one of the reasons behind enforced disappearances in the region is CPEC, "the intelligence agencies treat [the critics of CPEC] as their enemies".[460]