Missing persons: Girl accuses FC of abducting her father before 30 witnesses
Voice for Baloch Missing Persons calls for international organisations to intervene.
QUETTA:
Narrating the tale of her father’s enforced disappearance, the daughter of Munshi Nabi Bakhsh Baloch accused the Frontier Corps (FC) of picking him up from a check post located in Jusak village in Kachhi, in July this year.
Addressing a press conference at a hunger strike camp, set up by relatives of missing persons outside the Quetta Press Club, she said her 80-year-old father was returning from his native village Turbat, Kech when their bus was intercepted by the FC as it approached a check post.
She said eyewitnesses revealed that FC personnel verified the identities of passengers and subsequently asked them to board the bus again. However, she claimed that her father was bundled into a double-door vehicle with tinted glasses. She claimed that almost 25 to 30 passengers were travelling in the bus and witnessed the incident.
“Despite a lapse of four months, we have received no information about our father’s whereabouts. He never indulged in any illegal activity,” she added.
An FIR was registered at the Turbat police station after witnesses informed the family of the incident and an application was submitted to the Supreme Court’s Balochistan Registry, but all efforts have been in vain, she said.
Baloch’s daughter also lashed out against the apex court, saying it was incapable of doing anything against Pakistan’s powerful agencies.
“Therefore, I appeal to human rights organisations from the European Union and other international organisations to build pressure on Pakistani authorities and agencies to provide relief to aggrieved mothers, sisters and daughters,” she maintained.
Vice president of Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, Mama Qadir Baloch, speaking on the occasion, said that their organisation would appear before the Supreme Court bench in Quetta on Monday, but did not expect any concrete progress in the case.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 6th, 2012.
Narrating the tale of her father’s enforced disappearance, the daughter of Munshi Nabi Bakhsh Baloch accused the Frontier Corps (FC) of picking him up from a check post located in Jusak village in Kachhi, in July this year.
Addressing a press conference at a hunger strike camp, set up by relatives of missing persons outside the Quetta Press Club, she said her 80-year-old father was returning from his native village Turbat, Kech when their bus was intercepted by the FC as it approached a check post.
She said eyewitnesses revealed that FC personnel verified the identities of passengers and subsequently asked them to board the bus again. However, she claimed that her father was bundled into a double-door vehicle with tinted glasses. She claimed that almost 25 to 30 passengers were travelling in the bus and witnessed the incident.
“Despite a lapse of four months, we have received no information about our father’s whereabouts. He never indulged in any illegal activity,” she added.
An FIR was registered at the Turbat police station after witnesses informed the family of the incident and an application was submitted to the Supreme Court’s Balochistan Registry, but all efforts have been in vain, she said.
Baloch’s daughter also lashed out against the apex court, saying it was incapable of doing anything against Pakistan’s powerful agencies.
“Therefore, I appeal to human rights organisations from the European Union and other international organisations to build pressure on Pakistani authorities and agencies to provide relief to aggrieved mothers, sisters and daughters,” she maintained.
Vice president of Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, Mama Qadir Baloch, speaking on the occasion, said that their organisation would appear before the Supreme Court bench in Quetta on Monday, but did not expect any concrete progress in the case.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 6th, 2012.