BADIN: A large number of activists of the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz-Arisar and the banned Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaz and took out a rally and held a demonstration in Khorwah town on Monday in protest against ‘unabated extrajudicial murders and enforced disappearances’ of nationalist party activists by state agencies and police.

The local leaders of the nationalist parties, including Wazir Ahmed Panhwar, Pervez Ansari and Aslam Maheri who led the protest, told journalists that law-enforcement agencies had made the lives of nationalist activists miserable and warned them of dire consequences if they did not stop immediately.

They condemned recent disappearance of JSMM activist Asif Ali Panhwar and demanded his early release.

They said on the one hand the government was holding talks with those who had announced civil disobedience while on the other state agencies had unleashed a reign of terror on Sindhi and Baloch nationalists.

‘JSMM man picked up by officials in plain clothes’

HYDERABAD: The family of the missing JSMM activist Asif Ali Panhwar has accused officers of Sindh University, Jamshoro police and law-enforcement agencies of being involved in the enforced disappearance of their relative.

Ms Zubaida Panhwar, mother of Asif, and other family members told reporters at a press conference at the press club on Monday that Asif who was an activist of the JSMM’s student wing, Jeay Sindh Student Federation, was picked up at the residence of advocate Ameer Hassan Panhwar near Naseem Nagar Chowk in Qasimabad on Aug 15 by personnel of police and agency officials in plain clothes.

They appealed to educated people, the United Nations and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan to play their role in his safe recovery.

They said the activist who studied in the telecommunication department in the university paid the price of raising voice for the rights of students and against official corruption rampant in the university.

They said that Asif was detained earlier for seven days two years ago. They said they had approached Naseem Nagar police but the officials expressed ignorance about Asif.

Some eyewitnesses told the family that police officials and others in plain clothes came to “arrest the activist on Aug 15”. If he was guilty, he must be produced in court and his arrest be acknowledged immediately, he said.

They expressed the fear Asif could be killed and thrown on a road like other disappeared JSMM activists who had turned up dead on roadsides in the past.

They warned that if some untoward incident took place, the university administration, police and secret agencies would be held responsible for it.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2014