BY YOUSAF AJAB BALOCH
Balochistan’s missing persons belong to different walks of life. According to the Voice for Missing Baloch Persons (VMBP), more than 12,000 Baloch political activists, students, teachers, lawyers, and farmers have been whisked away from different parts of Balochistan. It is alleged that the Frontier Corps (FC) collaborated with the intelligence agencies to ‘abduct’ these people.
Missing Persons’ issue dates back even before Perveze Musharaf’s regime. According to one list, Ghulam Mustafa Shahwani, the elder brother of Faqeer Muhammad Ajiz Baloch, the Mastung coordinator of VMBP who was killed on October 21, the number of disappeared is as high as 12, 000, was the first Baloch to go missing. Mustafa is still missing. The exact number of whisked persons is disputed.
Various lists indicate that the missing persons consist children, women and elderly citizens. The most known story is of Zarina Marri, a school teacher imprisoned by intelligence agencies whose story was disclosed by Munir Mengal, another victim of torture and disappearance, who met the former in an underground cell during his imprisonment.
Though the family members of the missing Balochs are protesting in different ways such as by holding demonstrations, hunger strikes and all other political ways to attract the superior judiciary and human rights organizations, their efforts have failed to yield any success.
For the purpose of bringing the families of the missing persons together, the Voice for Missing Baloch Persons was established on October 27, 2009. The organization began the search for families in different parts of Balochistan whose loved ones had been picked up and subjected to enforced disappearance.
The organization provides legal assistance to the families of the missing persons by helping them to register cases and lodging petitions at the courts. Furthermore, another body called the International Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (IVBMP) has also been established which is highlighting the matter.
In fact, all articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are currently being violated in Balochistan. Let me, for instance, cite articles 9 and 10 which are relevant to the missing persons of Balochistan.
Article nine states, ” No one shall be subjected to arrest, detention or exile.”
Article ten says, “everyone is entitled, in full equality, to fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligation and of any criminal charge against him.”
Pakistan’s Constitution strictly prohibits “enforced disappearance”. Article ten of the Constitution says that every detainee would have the right to be informed of the charges against him; to hire a lawyer of his choice to defend all charges and be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours of arrest.
Regrettably, the above international and national human rights declarations have not been respected. Several years have passed since thousands of Balochs went missing. No information has been shared about their whereabouts and the charges leveled against them.
The recent phenomenon of recovery of dead bodies of Baloch missing persons is in fact terrifying. These people are killed and dumped in an inhuman manner. Since June 2010, more than 50 Baloch political activists, lawyers, shopkeepers, and writers had been kidnapped, tortured, and mutilated in a similar manner and their built- riddled bodies were thrown in wilderness. Though the atrocities had begun with Ghulam Muhammad Baloch, Lala Munir Baloch, Sher Muhammad Baloch, and Rasool Bux Baloch, the acceleration can be seen now.
This upsurge has not only worried affected families of Baloch Missing persons, but also the international organizations working against human rights violations. In a recent statement, the Amnesty International urged Pakistan to investigate the murder and torture of Baloch activists and leaders over the past four months. It said, “The government must act immediately to provide justice for the growing list of atrocities in Baluchistan. Baloch political leaders and activists are clearly being targeted and the government must do much more to end this alarming trend.”
The first International Conference on Enforced Disappearance in Baluchistan was held in Geneva by the International Voice for Baloch Missing Persons with collaboration of International Humanist and Ethical Union in which delegates from the U.K U.S.A,Canada, Norway, and Spain participated.
The Geneva conference called upon the United States via a resolution to intervene in Balochistan to immediately stop the crimes against humanity in Balochistan.
The Balochistan Package, announced last year in November, promised to to immediately release all political workers except those charged under heinous crimes. On year down the line, neither the federal nor the provincial government could achieve a breakthrough.
The situation in Balochistan is becoming precarious day after day. The abduction of Baloch citizens has became a common practice. Killing, dumping, and decomposing bodies are the latest fashion of repression in the country’s largest province.
The Balochistan High Court (BHC) has hundreds of pending petitions filed by the families of the dead and still missing Balochs but it seems either indifferent or utterly helpless in coaxing the spymasters to release the missing persons.
Statements of the Governor and Chief Minister are also disappointing. “The Frontier Corps (FC) has established a parallel government and does not abide by the provincial government’s directives,” confessed Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani. The affected families believe they can most probably get some relief if the international community and international media start to pressurize Islamabad for the recovery of the missing.
The involvement of a third party, such as international human rights groups, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Asian Human Rights Commission can be fruitful in highlighting the issue. There is a need for a UN independent fact finding team to investigate human rights violations and atrocities taking place in Balochistan. The proposed team should visit the family members of the abducted youths and speak to the eyewitnesses of torture and brutality.
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