Whereabouts unknown: ‘My mother lies to me that dad is out of city’

Family of missing activist Samar Abbas heads to press club to make their voices heard

KARACHI: "I wait for my dad to pick me up from school but my mother keeps lying that he is out of city."

Missing activist Samar Abbas's son Behjat may be only seven years old. However, he seems to have attained the sensibility of an adult at this tender age. His mother tries to coax him into believing that Abbas is out of town but he is not ready to buy it.

Abbas, the founder of Civil Progressive Alliance, Pakistan, went to Islamabad on January 3 for a business meeting. He stayed in touch with his family on phone till January 7. He has been missing since. His family headed to Karachi Press Club on Saturday to make their plight heard. Abbas's father, 70-year-old Alamdar Hussain, narrated the family's ordeal before the media.

Overcome by emotion, the anxious father wore a sad face with his words barely coming out of his mouth. He said that one can bear the loss of life considering it as the will of God but if someone suddenly goes missing, it is intolerable. "Yaar missing mat karo, hamari neendain haraam hogayi hain [Please don't make someone go missing, we are having sleepless nights]," he implored.

He added that the family cannot tolerate the kind of accusations that are being levelled against Abbas on social media. "How can someone accuse him of blasphemy when he has performed Hajj two years ago?" he asked. He pointed out that the only similarity between Abbas and other missing persons is just that they went missing in the same week and from the same city. "Otherwise, neither Samar knew them nor they knew Samar," he said. "We belong to a practising Muslim family; therefore we cannot even hear the allegations of blasphemy about my son."

Hussain, who is a lawyer, explained that Samar was a human rights activist and, a few weeks ago, he also campaigned for Zulfikar Ali who was about to get hanged in Indonesia. "But who knew that one day Samar had to bear such a thing in his own motherland," he lamented. "It was my son who organised such a huge conference on interfaith harmony where scholars of all the faiths were invited. He respected all the faiths like he respected his own faith."

He urged upon the government to take immediate measures for the recovery of his son. He added that our society has been radicalised and people are incited on false propaganda to burn localities, after which they realise that what they did was wrong. "We want Samar to be recovered," he reiterated. "If he is a criminal, he should be tried in the court of law."

Samar's wife and their three children - two daughters and one son - were also present on the occasion.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 22^nd, 2017.