IT is heartening to see the government take up an issue that the previous administration did its best to sweep under the carpet and which the post-PCO Supreme Court appears to have put on hold. A day after the prime minister issued directives to locate all missing persons whose cases are pending before the SC, the law minister pledged on Wednesday that the government would make every effort in this regard. Others too need to lend their voice and help make the recovery of the ‘disappeared’ a reality. Now that his party is among the rulers, Mr Nawaz Sharif ought to live up to pre-election promises and use his influence to ensure that the missing are traced once and for all. This, after all, is what he promised on Feb 2 when he reportedly said that “the PML-N would fully support every movement to be launched at any platform for the recovery of missing people”.
According to the chairperson of Defence of Human Rights, a group representing scores of missing persons, 517 cases of enforced disappearance are currently pending in the Supreme Court. And as the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan pointed out on Monday, the SC has not heard a single such case since Nov 3, 2007. Needless to say, this is in stark contrast to the stance of the deposed chief justice who took suo motu notice of the disappearances and actively pursued the cases, going so far as to publicly question the role of the military’s intelligence agencies and order their officials to appear in court.
The numbers are hard to pin down because there is no knowing how many enforced disappearances have gone unreported, especially in Balochistan. This much, however, is known: most of the people picked up by the security apparatus of the previous regime are allegedly linked to jihadi organisations or sympathise with those espousing nationalist causes in Sindh and Balochistan. Hundreds still remain unaccounted for and there are fears that some of them may have been handed over — even ‘sold’ — to the US and may be languishing at Bagram or in Guantanamo Bay. It is moreover clear that many individuals with no jihadi or nationalist affiliation also fell victim to the swoop. The new democratically elected government is morally and legally obliged to bring this sorry chapter to a close and end the ceaseless suffering of the missing as well as their families who have been living in limbo for years. If there are solid charges against any of the detainees, they must be officially recorded so that the accused can have their day in court. As a symbolic gesture, to show that it means what it says, the state would do well to also sign the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
http://www.dawn.com/2008/04/18/ed.htm
|
