Numbers in missing persons case paint gloomy picture

Govt says only 71 people are missing while human rights organisations claim 8,000 people have been abducted.

QUETTA: Despite the government’s repeated promises to recover the missing Baloch people and bring the human rights violations in the restive province to an end, little progress has been made. 

Political observers believe that addressing the issue can help create an environment conducive to holding negotiations with the Baloch nationalists who have taken up arms.

However, the government, human rights organisation and advocacy groups have failed to even agree on the number of people missing in the province.

According to a report by Balochistan Home Department, human rights organisations had claimed that the secret agencies were behind the abduction of 8,000 people but when asked by court to submit details, they only provided names of 989 people.

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Missing persons
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On the directives of the interior ministry, Balochistan Home Department set up a special cell to deal with missing persons’ issue.

The cell had published the names provided by human rights organisation in various newspapers and requested their relatives to submit complete details. However, the cell received merely 194 applications.

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The interior ministry also set up a special task force with officers from secret agencies to look into the matter and three special commissions -- headed by DIG Police Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Sharif Werak, Justice (retired) Fazalur Rehman and Justice (retired) Javed Iqbal -- were also constituted.

Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), an organisation working for the safe recovery of missing persons, has said the number of missing persons and dead bodies recovered in Balochistan is much higher than the official figures.

According to VBMP, as many as 19,000 political activists and sympathisers had gone missing in the last 13 years.

VBMP Vice President Mama Qadir said his organisation had submitted a detailed report with evidence to the United Nations.

“There are more than 19,000 people who were subjected to enforced disappearances in Balochistan. None of them has been recovered as yet. Government did nothing except for releasing those who were detained for a brief period,” Qadir told The Express Tribune.

Qadir refuted government claims about discovering only 612 bodies between 2010 and 2013. “We have evidence that more than 2,000 people were killed in illegal detention cells and their bodies were dumped in Quetta, Khuzdar, Kalat, Mekran, Naseerabad, Sibi and Zhob,” he said.

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bodies found: Breakdown of official figures
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