Daily Times

On August 30, 2014, three dead bodies, wrapped in bedspreads and dumped alongside roads in Karachi, marked the International Day of the Disappeared. The dead bodies were later on identified as three Baloch who went missing a few months ago after they were picked up from a restaurant in Ghulam Muhammad Goth, Sindh. The Day in question is observed worldwide to create public awareness about people forcibly disappeared by either the state or its non-state allies and incarcerated in undisclosed locations in poor conditions, many of whom later turn up dead. During the 1960s and 70s, when most Latin American countries were under military dictatorships, thousands of people started disappearing without their families being able to discover their whereabouts or fate. To unravel this conundrum, some local and regional groups from Chile, Argentina, Guatemala and other Latin American countries formed an association. This activism provided the impulse for the General Assembly of the United Nations to adopt the Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance in 1992. Other international human rights activist organisations including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Amnesty International enabled these affected families to recover their loved ones. The United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has registered about 46,000 cases of people who disappeared under unknown circumstances.

Pakistan is one of the countries that has not signed the Declaration so far and sadly stands accused of being responsible for hundreds of abductions and enforced disappearances. The major victims of these atrocious acts largely remain citizens from Balochistan, and some across the country. Balochistan in particular has faced the worst of these scenarios, where it has become a norm to find mutilated and tortured bodies dumped along roadsides. The victims of these targeted abductions and killings include political activists, journalists, lawyers, as well as ordinary citizens. The government has done little to either retrieve these people or provide reparations to their families, despite such cases being taken up by the courts, in particular the Supreme Court. It is now imperative for the government to immediately ratify the Declaration and take adequate measures to locate the whereabouts of these missing people so that their relatives at least know the fate of their loved ones. The courts must renew their efforts in this matter and put on trial those responsible for such abductions and killings, ensuring the recovered victims receive fair trials if they are charged with breaking any laws. *