March 11, 2024
By Gohram Aslam Baloch
QUETTA
It has been nearly 14 years, but the camp Mama Qadeer had set up to protest enforced disappearances and for missing persons is still carrying its sit-in outside the Quetta Press Club, even today. The temperature in Quetta is low – it is bitterly cold – almost 6 degrees – but the 84-year-old man comes every day to visit the camp and sit there along with the other families of missing persons.
“Whenever I come here to sit at the camp, I see all these missing persons. I just sit there and look at their faces in silence,” he says. “I forget about my own pains and fears and I feel as if their pain and mine is the same.”
Mama Qadeer claims there are about 68,000 persons who have gone missing in Balochistan since 2000 thanks to being picked up by unknown elements, and yet the government refuses to believe the number is that high.
“Many of our young people, even the literate ones who are doctors, engineers, MPhil scholars have been picked up and have been missing since a long time,” he says. “If the Pakistan government wants, it can resolve the problem, but it doesnt. Pakistan is badly violating the Geneva Convention, and this has to be investigated. Those who have been abducted by the state and its agencies, must be presented in courts for a fair trial; afterwards if they are found guilty of something then we will go so far as to accept their punishment.”
Activist Bibo Baloch, who is sitting in protest for her sister’s missing husband, agrees.
“There is only one solution regarding the missing persons’ issue: people should be given their constitutional rights,” she says as she holds a placard of Jameel Sarparah Baloch who has been missing since 2015. Sarparah was the PA of the former governor of Balochistan, Mohammad Khan Achakzai.
“The suffering of the affected families should be recognized,” she says. “Missing persons must be either returned home or be given a free and fair trial so they may eventually have a chance of being reunited with their families and loved ones. This is the only solution.”
Meanwhile, Zubair Baloch, a young lawyer working for human rights told Voicepk that this was not just a human tragedy, it was also a ‘legal tragedy’.
“There is no room for the issue of enforced disappearance in any country in the world,” he said. “On top of it all the issue of collective punishment is appalling – torturing the entire family is completely unconstitutional. The same law should extend to everyone that anyone arrested should be brought to court within 24 hours.”
“The state must play its true role and advance towards a political solution of all these problems,” said Mama Qadeer. “The gradual release of the forcibly disappeared persons must start.”