Advocacy group, families of victims all praise for CJP

Ex-president of SCBA says people of Balochistan disappointed by CJ's handling of missing persons’ cases.

QUETTA: An advocacy group working for the recovery of missing persons in Balochistan thanked Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry for taking suo motu notice of the issue and for ordering the registration of cases of enforced disappearances.

“The police started registering FIRs in cases of enforced disappearances in 2010 following the Supreme Court’s order,” said Nasurullah Baloch, the chairman of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VFMBP).”

“In 2012, the Supreme Court declared that the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) and intelligence agencies were involved in enforced disappearances in Balochistan,” he added.

According to the VFMBP, as many as 26 people, who had been missing for several months, have thus far been recovered. “However, there are thousands of people who have been missing for years and are yet to be traced,” Baloch said. The VFMBP chairman’s uncle, Mir Ali Asghar Bangulzai, has been missing since 2001.

Kurd ‘disappointed’

Conversely, former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) Ali Ahmed Kurd said that the people of Balochistan were disappointed by Chief Justice Chaudhry’s handling of the missing persons’ cases.

“The chief justice belongs to Balochistan and spent years as a lawyer and advocate general in this province,” said Kurd. “This is why we hoped he would devote all his energy towards addressing the major issue of this neglected province but he has failed to do so.”

Kurd said the chief justice could have taken the case right after his restoration in 2008 when he was, Kurd argued, “the most powerful man” in Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 11^th, 2013.