'The
Disappeared'
By Zia Ur Rehman
13 August, 2007
The
News
The
Supreme Court of Pakistan, while hearing the disappeared or missing
person case, called for the case-to-case details of each and every missing
person from the Attorney General. Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry
for first time after his re-instatement heard this missing persons'
case. The AG made a plea that he wanted to meet the family members of
the missing persons, for which, he be given time. The Court adjourned
the hearing of the case until August 20 and directed the AG to submit
case-to-case details of each and every missing person in the next hearing.
(The News, Aug 7, 2007)
In Balochistan, the military
has been conducting operation since the year 2000. Since then hundreds
of people have gone missing, according to the reports of human rights
organisations and Baloch nationalist parties. The current rise of tensions
flows from long-standing grievances felt by the local population in
relation to severe economic underdevelopment and failures to receive
the benefits of large-scale exploitation of the province's natural resources.
Dr Jahanzaib Jamaldini, Acting
Vice-President of Balochistan National Party (BNP) told this writer
in Noshki that "We have a list of more than 3000 thousands people
who have been arrested by the intelligence agencies from different parts
of Balochistan.The agencies picked up the Baloch youths from different
parts of Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab and tortured them severely."
Aftab Sherpao, the federal interior minister had revealed when talking
to media persons in December 2005 in Turbat that nearly 4000 people
had been arrested from Balochistan but after a few days, official sources
claimed that the federal minister had only referred to those illegal
immigrants who had trespassed the Pak-Iran border in 2005.
Similarly a list of missing
people was released by Ghulam Muhammad Baloch, central president, Baloch
National Movement (BNM) in a seminar on June 19, 2006 organised by Labour
Education Foundation (LEF) in Karachi. Few days later, he was picked
up by plain clothed officers of unknown law enforcing agencies and till
today, no one knows about his whereabouts. Ghulam Muhammad Baloch, a
vocal speaker and former chairperson of Baloch Students Organisation
(BSO), was very popular amongst Baloch youth and students and disappointed
with parliamentary politics.
A list of missing Baloch
activists and citizens are also quoted in a pamphlet entitled 'Waiting
for Truth and Justice' published by Balochistan National Party (BNP).
On the other hand, IG Police,
Balochistan ,Chaudhry Muhammad Yaqoob said , "Those who are quoting
3000 or 4000 people as missing are in fact exploiting the figure in
view of the present circumstances." He challenged them to produce
the names and addresses of all those 3000 people. Baloch nationalist
parties refer to HRCP reports claiming that 3000 people are missing.
However, according to the data collected by HRCP, 600 people have 'disappeared'
in the country over the past five years. There is a very contradiction
in figure of missing people in Balochistan.
The reports of HRCP, Asian
Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and Amnesty International (AI) highlighted
many cases of torture on Baloch activists under the custody of law enforcing
agencies. Dr. Imdad Baloch, chairman of BSO, was detained in a military
torture cell for 6 months, when he was finally released; he re-counted
his ordeal to Zahoor Shahwani, representative of HRCP Balochistan and
media in Karachi in November 2005. Details included how he and his colleagues
were detained in an unknown location, where they were blind folded and
only in absolute emergencies, they were allowed to take their blind
folds off. They were beaten severely and were burned with cigarettes.
One of Imdad Baloch's legs was broken during the torture. When nothing
was extracted from him, he was thrown to Dera Ghazi Khan, Punjab.
Dr. Allah Nazar Baloch, another
leader of BSO, who was also arrested, was not only severely tortured
but during his unlawful detention, he was forced to consume poison which
has resulted in him not being able to recognise people properly an he
has been permanently paralysed. Saleem Baloch, a leader of Jamhoori
Watan Party (JWP) and a political activist of Karachi, also narrated
his story of illegal detention and suffering at the office of HRCP,
Karachi after release but sadly he was again picked up by law enforcing
agencies from Lyari, Karachi. Ustad Sattar Baloch, a school teacher,
was given electric shocks in the torture cell. HRCP's annual reports
and publications are full of similar stories of Baloch political activists
and citizens.
Munir Mengal, missing Managing
Director of the proposed Balochi TV channel, 'Baloch Voice' has surfaced
after more than one year. He has been arrested at Karachi Airport on
his return from Bahrain but his whereabouts could not be known for months.
Munir had applied to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regularity Authority
(PEMRA) for the license of TV channel.
Disappearances work on two
levels: not only do they effectively silence those opposition members
who have disappeared, they also sow uncertainty and terror in the wider
community in general, thus silencing other opposition voices, current
and potential alike. Disappearances entail the violation of a series
of basic human rights and fundamental freedoms. For the disappeared
person, these include the right to liberty, the right to personal security
and humane treatment, the right to a fair trial, to legal counsel, and
to equal protection under the law, the right of presumption of innocence,
etc. The families, who often spend the rest of their lives in searches
for remains of the disappeared, also become victims of the disappearance's
effects.
Aug 30, as the International
Day of the Disappeared is an annual commemoration day created to draw
attention to the fate of individuals imprisoned at places and under
poor conditions unknown to their relatives and/or legal representatives.
The impulse for the day came from the Federation of Associations for
Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared (Federacien Latinoamericana de
Asociaciones de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, or FEDEFAM),
a NGO founded in 1981 in Costa Rica as an association of local and regional
groups actively working against secret imprisonment and forced disappearances
in a number of Latin-American countries.
This Day is an opportunity
to highlight these institutions' work, increase public awareness, and
to call for donations and volunteers. Amnesty International (AI), the
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR),
the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Asian Human
Rights Commission (AHRC) are main international bodies and organisations
who are the important concerned organisations. In Pakistan, HRCP is
the body taking up this issue aggressively.
The human rights organisations,
civil society and political parties demand that list of missing people
should be made public, an independent tribunal consisting of Supreme
Court, members of Parliament and representatives of Human Rights organisations
should be formed and The International Convention for the Protection
of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance to be ratified by the government.
The writer is social researcher
and political analyst.
Email:[email protected]
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