Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Secretary General and former senator Farhatullah Babar on Friday urged the government to fulfil its promises of introducing a legislation to criminalise enforced disappearances and ending torture.
He said this while addressing a protest demonstration held by the families of victims of enforced disappearances. Speaking on the occasion, he said that instead of criminalising enforced disappearances, the government had appealed against a recent judgement of the Islamabad High Court that gave some limited relief to the victims and their families.
Babar said that human rights were universal and not confined to national boundaries, and demanded that the voice of victim families be heeded before they approached the international community. He said there were very stern laws in the penal code and if anyone had done any wrong he should be prosecuted against under the law. He said that keeping people interned for years without trace and trial, and even without informing their families could not be allowed in a democratic society governed by the rule of law. “Enforced disappearances are the worst form of torture, despotism and negation of rule of law that must not be allowed,” he said, and called upon the government to sign the international convention against enforced disappearances. Babar said that internment centres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the tribal areas had become Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons of Pakistan, and called for converting them into normal jails to be governed by jail manuals.