QUETTA: Thirty-year-old tailor Nasrullah Bangalzai has a very personal reason for wanting the new government to reinstate the sacked judges.
One night in October 2001, Bangalzai's uncle Ali Asghar went to work at the family tailoring shop in Shaki Shahwani village on the outskirts of Quetta and never returned. It was a month after Al Qaeda's September 11 attacks on the United States, and Pakistani intelligence agencies were under pressure to show they had turned against the Taliban movement protecting Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Asghar was not a Talib - he wasn't even Pashtun, the ethnic group that makes up the bulk of the Taliban's ranks. "His crime was that he was Baloch. He felt the pain of his people and expressed them publicly," Bangalzai explained sombrely, as Asghar's 8-year-old son sat silently alongside him cross-legged on the floor of their single-storey brick house.
Asghar's case had been taken up by Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court who was sacked by President Pervez Musharraf in November 2007.
Iftikhar ordered intelligence agencies to account for missing people and critics believe that it was one of the moves that strained ties with the military-backed president. "We have very high hopes from [the] chief justice because of the way he took action in our case," Bangalzai told Reuters during Iftikhar's triumphant return to his hometown, Quetta, last week.
Bangalzai's eyes remained downcast as he recounted years of seeking answers from the authorities and security agencies. "They take our applications and give assurances, but these assurances get us nowhere," Bangalzai said. Disappearances multiplied in 2006, when the army moved to crush a revolt in Balochistan led by tribal chieftain Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.
Shakar Bibi, a lawyer fighting dozen of cases of missing Baloch people, said Quetta's lower courts refused to take a stand. "They delay cases, avoid issuing orders and if they do, nobody cares," Bibi said. "We're creating enemies everyday. Military action or torturing Baloch isn't the answer," a senior Balochistan government official, who declined to be identified, said. reuters
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008 4 9story_9-4-2008_pg7_10 |
