Balochistan: The significant aspect of enforced disappearances

By Hafeez Hassanabadi

From 2001 till now, the Baloch educated class has been disappearing and their mutilated bodies are being found across  Balochistan. Even if 0.01% of this number of birds were killed or injured in a civilized country, hundreds of documentaries would have been made numerous rescue efforts would have gone viral in the media.

However, Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) has been protesting continuously for the past twelve years. It is trying to convey its painful ordeal to the world by setting up protest camps in various cities of Pakistan and Balochistan including Quetta, Karachi, and Islamabad.

Internationally, the International Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (IVBMP), many other organizations and personalities have been raising this issue but to no avail. The Baloch and Balochistan are continuously and deliberately ignored as if they are not part of this universe or they are crying behind an invisible and soundproof wall that no one sees and hears.

The tragic thing about this prolonged issue is that Pakistani civil society, political parties, courts, and even human rights organizations offer various justifications for the Baloch issue either to justify the obscure deeds of Pakistani institutions or to hide their inaction.

Opportunistic Role of Political Parties:

The role of all Pakistani parliamentary political parties on enforced disappearances has been opportunistic and somewhat hypocritical. Since we do not expect any good from the Pakistani political parties, we are content to say briefly about them that after dictator Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) not only maintained those policies, but the “kill and dump ” policy was a regular practice in their tenure in power. Later, the Pakistan Muslim League (PM-N) and Pakistan Tharek -e- Insaf (PTI)  governments along with other small and big political parties did not try to bring any change in these cruel attitudes. While no one was left behind in expressing verbal sympathies about the illegal disappearances.

During this time, a common denominator was found in all the parties, which is that whichever party came to the opposition, they remembered the mutilated bodies of Baloch and Pashtun forcibly disappeared, but as soon as they got power, the style of speech changed.

However, something must be said about the attitudes of those parties who call Baloch and Balochistan the nucleus of their politics. They boast that the defence of its coasts, resources and Baloch honour is part of their belief. They get votes based on this slogan and go to the parliament such as National Party (NP) Balochistan National Party (BNP -Mengal and BNP-Awami) Jamoori Watan Party (JWP) and to a limited extent Jamiat Ulema -e- Islam Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, and many important personalities, etc.

From the 2005 to 2018 elections, these parties and some individuals have been working to pave the way for dialogue for the families of enforced disappeared Baloch and the Baloch freedom fighters with  Islamabad, the termination of continuous military operations in Balochistan and to end of state-sponsored death squads to win the sympathies of their people. They got in power by taking votes under the slogans of fulfilling the promises.

But they never succeeded in fulfilling the promises based on which they came to the Parliament.

The impotence of Judiciary or equal complicity in State crime:

In September 2013, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, while hearing the case of disappearance in Balochistan, said that “there is evidence that FC officials are involved in some cases” he was enraged with his institutions and added, “Why should the Inspector General Frontier Corps (FC) not be made to stand in court until the missing persons are recovered?”

Almost nine years later, on June 17, 2022, Islamabad High Court Chief Justice Athar Minullah asked the Deputy Attorney General during the hearing of the case of the missing persons, why people were still being “picked up” and “What steps has the federal government taken and who is responsible?” he asked.

 During his remarks he ordered the government to investigate the cases of missing people, adding that it would be preferred if the chief executive of the country was present.

“You are proving that [forcibly] disappearing people has been the policy of the State since the days of General Musharraf. Someone is responsible for the period in which people go missing,” the judge remarked.

The court also stated that if the practice continued and the government failed to comply with the orders of the IHC, they were “largely ineffective”.

Who is the unknown but known responsible?

As we have referred to the remarks of the two Chief Justices above, then the question should not arise in anyone’s mind as to who is behind the disappearance of people and throwing missing people’s mutilated bodies.

In the context of this fact, three basic questions arise for us.

First, if the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court himself confirms who is the oppressor and who is oppressed, then why can’t he bring the law into action and give justice to the oppressed? Why is there no difference between the oral assurance of the Chief Justice and so-called political leaders about Baloch?

We do not need to hear from the Supreme Court who is killing us, who is forcibly disappearing, who is sometimes harassing, sometimes disappearing, and sometimes killing the families of the missing people who raised their voices for the recovery of abducted Baloch. Because we already know everything ourselves, if we need something, what practical steps can you, Chief Justice, take to end this brutality?

Why the Barriers?

The second question is, in any country when injustice is done to a citizen or a crime is committed against him, he goes to the law enforcement agencies. When the law enforcers themselves are committing injustice and crimes, then where should the victims go? In the case of Baloch and Pashtuns, they have taken their cases to social media and thanks to this public platform, the whole world is seeing that Baloch and Pashtuns are being illegally disappeared.

The Baloch and Pashtun enforced-disappeared persons are kept in illegal captivity for years without allowing them to prove their innocence, they are not given the right to have a lawyer to defend them, they are subjected to torture in the custody of the forces and their bodies are thrown away when they die due to inhuman torture.

Why don’t international institutions seriously consider this grave issue and ask Pakistan as a signatory state for its violations of international laws and find a solution to stop this brutality?

The third very important and basic question is why the people who are missing are not presented in Pakistani courts. Does it mean the Pakistani army, rulers, politicians and other power holders do not have faith in their judicial system and constitution?

Why are the courts powerless before the army?

Is the military above all laws?

The Baloch missing families’ demands are legitimate in all respects, but the rulers, the political parties, and the civil society have not been able to persuade the security forces of Pakistan to accept their legitimate demands or the security forces are satisfied that they are not answerable to anyone and they are above the law. Hence, they do not listen to anyone.

The families of the missing persons are also saying that our people are innocent, but the common Pakistanis have not always considered their point of view. It seems that they knowingly do not want to hear the plea of the families of disappeared persons.

Now, what a former Prime Minister has said about this issue, not only does it prove the innocence of Baloch and Pashtuns missing persons, but it is also a clear and criminal confession of being above all law of the Pakistani security forces.

The former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan said in one of his statements that when he raised the question of missing persons not being brought before the court by security agencies, he was told that “since it is difficult to prove the guilt of these people. If you present them in the courts, these people go free due to lack of evidence and then attack our forces.”

Is there any example of such lawlessness and arbitrary brutalities in the whole world that because we ( the authorities) cannot prove the crime of the accused that’s why we do not bring it to court?  Is it a solution to hide your failure, you keep innocent persons in incommunicado detention for years only because you suspect them and subject them to inhuman torture? Then the suspect persons are either tortured to death in custody or killed in staged encounters to hide the failure of security forces.

The latest example of such brutalities is the Ziarat massacre where nine previously abducted Baloch were killed in cold blood and it was announced by the military media wing that they killed ‘terrorists in a gun battle. As they say that no one can hide the truth: it turned out that seven out of nine people killed in Ziarat were already in the custody of Pakistani forces. Their relatives have been sitting in the protest camp of Voice for Baloch Missing Persons holding pictures of their loved ones. There were FIRs registered with local authorities, petitions were pending in courts for their safe recovery.

Several abducted Baloch have been killed and dumped in mass graves while many were buried and regarded as abandoned and having no family.  

On the other hand, the state is creating an extravaganza a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) and so-called Commissions to torment the families of missing persons by having endless hearings and instead of easing the sufferings of the families of missing persons, these Commission keep on summoning for one hearing after another. The rest of their time is spent on the identification of the dead bodies that appear now and then from different areas of Balochistan. The so-called Judicial Commission is rubbing salt on the wounds of victims’ families by giving them false hope and doing nothing to comfort their pain.

In the context of the extra-judicial disappearances and killing of Baloch and Pashtuns, it is necessary to remember that in many countries of the world, the death penalty is abolished so that no innocent life is lost due to minor mistakes or lack of timely evidence.  

Here, a former prime minister Mr Imran Khan says that the army does not present the missing people before the court because they do not have enough evidence against them. While another Prime Minister Mr Shehbaz Sharif said about the enforced disappearances in Quetta that he will raise the issue with “powerful quarters“, this means that the missing persons are in the custody of the Pakistani army where neither the politicians, the judiciary nor the Pakistani civil society is in a position to do anything.

In other words, everybody and every institution in Pakistan seem helpless before the criminal and crooked army of Pakistan.

In such a situation, the eyes of the oppressed are only on the international community and world powers, the international court of justice and international human rights institutions.

If the world can see and take notice of the occupation of Russia in Ukraine, then they should also not ignore the illegal and forcible occupation of Balochistan by Pakistan. If they see human rights violations and human tragedy in Ukraine, then they should also see the mutilated bodies of Baloch and the sobbing children, old men and women of the relatives of the forcibly disappeared in the streets of Quetta and elsewhere.