Speaking at a news conference at a hunger strike camp outside the Quetta Press Club, Chairperson of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VFBMP) Nasurallah Baloch and other relatives said that despite tall claims made by the government and the judiciary, not a single missing Baloch person was recovered or produced before the court of law.
“The government and the Supreme Court have failed to resolve the issue, but we, the relatives of missing persons, will continue our agitation,” they said and announced that they would soon establish a camp outside the Karachi Press Club to record their protest with human rights organisations.
Baloch said the government and the judiciary are dealing with the people of Balochistan as if they are colonised.
He said his organisation also boycotted the powerless Judicial Commission formed by the federal government because of its lack of interest in the issue. “We have produced evidence about the involvement of secret agencies and security forces in picking up Baloch people, but the commission did not make any efforts,” he said and added that, “Despite the fact that the commission was told that it must spend more time in Balochistan rather than other provinces, it only held two hearings in which 40 cases with complete data had been produced before them.”
He said judges might have been afraid that the number of cases would increase, thus did not come back to Balochistan and even withdrew many cases ignoring evidence.
The relatives, including women, said that they are transferring their camp to Karachi and then they will go to Islamabad to record their protest and highlight the issue to the international community through diplomats in Islamabad.
According to the VFBMP, more than 8,000 people had been picked up throughout Balochistan since the beginning of Musharraf’s regime and they possess complete data of 1,100 missing persons.
Talking to The Express Tribune, Home Secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani said there were 117 cases of missing persons registered with the provincial government and the Supreme Court. Among them, 25 had been traced while 35 names have been deleted from the list because of irrelevant and doubtful evidence.
He said that 57 people are still missing and the government is making all efforts to trace them. He added that the government had set up a special cell in the home department for the recovery of missing persons. “I am part of the cell too and we include people who really went missing. Sometimes people add the names of criminals and dacoits,” he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 16th, 2010.
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