IN 1976 a military junta threw out a democratically elected government and seized power in Argentina. It ruled until 1982 when Britain defeated the generals in the Falklands war and the country resumed its brand of democracy.

The six-year period during which the generals held sway has become known as the ‘dirty war’. The junta was responsible for the disappearance of over 9,000 people though some human rights groups maintain that as many as 30,000 were tortured and killed.

A systematic campaign was embarked upon to wipe out left-wing terrorism, but the terror spread by the generals exceeded anything the leftists could have dreamed of, claiming not only the lives of dissidents but of innocent sons, daughters, husbands and wives who were detained and then simply disappeared. They were and remain today the ‘desaparecidos’ of Argentina.

After the demise of the junta its members were tried and convicted, some were pardoned by a democratically elected president and in 1986-87 the still powerful military pressured a fragile civilian government to extend amnesty to many other military men facing prosecution.

The ballot box is a strange thing and elections in insecure countries do not always have a cleansing effect. In 1995, a retired junta general, Antonio Bussi, who was a provincial military governor during the junta’s misrule, was elected governor of the same province by voters undeterred by accusations that he had ordered and participated in firing squads and that he had a healthy Swiss bank account filled with filthy lucre plundered from victims he had detained and then shot. Such are the ways of free and fair elections — as we well know to our sorrow and detriment.

The most sinister participant in the ‘dirty war’ was a naval captain, Alfredo Ignacio Astiz, who was responsible for the arrest and murder of hundreds of mothers of ‘desaparecidos’ who, during the junta rule, formed a society known as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and demonstrated and marched in protest. He masterminded the arrest, torture and disappearance of some 5,000 men and women, his favourite method of disposal being to drug them and then throw them alive from military planes into the South Atlantic. Astiz was charged with kidnapping and murder but freed under the amnesty laws imposed by the military. Such are the ways of insecure countries dominated by the military.

One lame saving grace: in 1995, the then head of the army acknowledged the military’s culpability for the crimes it had committed. But the prestige and power of Argentina’s armed forces never recovered from their ‘dirty war’.

Pakistan cannot quite match the Argentine figures, as far as we know, for the disappearance of its citizens. But it has not done too badly over the past five years and this year with the Balochistan situation it has excelled itself. Sixty-five Baloch have been picked up and made to disappear. A handful of those whisked away were released after a few days’ detention and have told harrowing stories of their torture and humiliation.

Former PPP senator, Iqbal Haider, now of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), held a press briefing on the disappearance of the citizens of Pakistan on December 6 in Karachi during which he related details of many of those missing and statements given by the few who escaped permanent disappearance.

Iqbal Haider has the distinction of having resigned from his party, which he did at a cabinet meeting in 1994 after a telling off by his leader Benazir Bhutto. The PPP had enacted a law under which parliamentarians held and charged with crimes would be allowed to participate in assembly sessions. The Gujrat Chaudhry, now on top of the heap that is the ruling party of Pakistan, had been arrested on the normal corruption charges and Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, now a minister running the railways, had been arrested for the possession of planted Kalashnikovs. Iqbal brought both of them out of detention and into an assembly session and thus incurred the wrath of his prime minister and party chairperson for life. He is now very clued up on the sleight of hand wielded by this present dispensation and its magical disappearance tricks.

Now, President General Pervez Musharraf himself is a regular visitor to the UN headquarters in New York where he has delivered addresses to the assembly, his prime minister, Shaukat Aziz sits on a committee dedicated to UN reforms, and his parliamentarians flock each year ostensibly to attend the UN General Assembly sessions, but in reality to shop and indulge in rest and recreation and enjoy the good things in life not so readily available in the homeland.

Is any one of them familiar with the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances issued by the UN General Assembly in 1992 which, inter alia, states “Article 1 — Any act of enforced disappearance is an offence to human dignity. It is condemned as a denial of the purposes of the Charter of the United Nations and as a grave and flagrant violation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and reaffirmed and developed in international instruments in this field. Article 2 — No State shall practise, permit or tolerate enforced disappearances.”

It specifically condemns states in which “persons are arrested, detained or abducted against their will or otherwise deprived of their liberty by officials of different branches or levels of government, or by organised groups, or private individuals acting on behalf of, or with the support, direct or indirect, consent or acquiescence of the government, followed by a refusal to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the persons concerned or a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of their liberty, which places such persons outside the protection of the law.”

At Iqbal’s press briefing he stated that according to reports directly received and to data compiled by the HRCP, some 400 citizens have so far been abducted and of these 241 have been verified as enforced disappearances. The disappeared are mainly citizens belonging to nationalist parties, their student wings, postgraduate students of universities mainly in Sindh and Balochistan, members of various religious groups (Sunni and Shia), working journalists, scientists and even members of the armed forces. The law enforcement agencies are undeterred by any law or consequences.

The Supreme Court has taken suo motu notice of the rapidly increasing cases of disappearances. As a result of this intervention, out of a list of 41 missing people provided to the court, 20 missing citizens were found. The honourable court, while expressing its disappointment and disapproval of this practice, has directed the law enforcement agencies to produce the remaining ‘disappeared’ persons before the next date of hearing. Now we wait to see what will be the reaction.

Full details of a number of identified ‘disappeared’ citizens have been given by Tahir Mirza, our former editor, in his well researched and well written column, ‘The demands of freedom’, printed on this page on December 8. The figures can be substantiated.

How can President General Musharraf, who reigns and rules over this country feign ignorance of the atrocities committed by his law enforcement agencies? He cannot and he should not be a party to these disgraceful and shameful deeds.

arfc@cyber.net.pk