Enforced disappearances, or ‘missing persons’ cases, are cases where individuals are secretly imprisoned by state organisations and their whereabouts are not acknowledged. To mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, Dawn spoke to Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Chairperson Zohra Yusuf about these cases, and the legal recourses available to victims and their families.

Q: What kind of legal recourse is available to victims of enforced disappearances or their families?

A: It is illegal to pick someone up and make them disappear without [charging them], even under the harshest laws, such as the Protection of Pakistan Act, which just expired. Under that act, law enforcement can keep someone in custody for 90 days, but with certain limitations.

Enforced disappearances are illegal under international and Pakistani laws, which is why people go to court against them. We also filed a case in February 2007, which is pending before the Supreme Court. And law enforcement and intelligence agencies always deny [the claims].

It has become increasingly costly to pursue these cases and now you have to pay separately for each individual.

We filed our case for more than 600 people, since then some have come home and that number decreased to around 200.

A UN working group met with government officials and victims’ families in Balochistan in September 2012 and recommended that the government sign the convention against enforced disappearances. No action has been taken on the recommendation as yet.

Q: Where are incidents of enforced disappearances concentrated, and who is typically targeted?

A: The highest numbers come from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and it is mostly people whom security agencies believe, rightly or wrongly, to be involved in militancy, or what are considered anti-state activities. In Balochistan, the victims are primarily nationalists, or whom they believe to be separatists. This is not always the case, but arrests are made on suspicions, not evidence.

An HRCP activist was picked up and his body was found four months later in Balochistan and he had been tortured.

Those who are picked up are mostly younger than 40 and male. Baloch nationalists have said that women have been picked up too but we have not been able to verify these claims. But, there is a case of a woman in Punjab, Zeenat [Shahzadi], who is an activist and journalist and has been missing for a year now. Her case is also before the government’s commission inquiry.

Q: Has the state ever been made to explain its actions once an individual who was picked up returned home?

A: That has not happened because the chapter closes when a person returns home and because of this impunity, it continues to happen.

There have many cases of bodies being recovered from Balochistan or even Karachi. And even when people are recovered, [they are in a bad state]. There was a famous case, of the Adiala 11, where 11 people had gone missing and were located at an internment centre. The court asked for them to be produced and their condition was so bad that they went from being Adiala 11 to Adiala seven, because four of them died.

Q: Has there been progress in recent cases, such as the case of Abdul Wahid Baloch, who was allegedly ‘picked up’ at the end of last month?

A: We investigated the case and our vice chair met with the Rangers personnel on duty as well as the SHO, and they denied the claims.

The SHO said the family could not identify anyone against whom to register a case, and he was afraid of naming security agencies.

We met with the person who was with [Mr Baloch] and who had reported the matter, but he also repeated the same story. So there has been no progress.

Q: How does the HRCP facilitate those looking to pursue such cases?

A: We have cases pending in the SC and we try to maintain a database, which is incomplete because some information is not always available.

The government set up a commission for inquiring into forced disappearances which meets every three months.

They have located some people and the commission’s performance is improving, but they cannot take on security agencies.

No one has been punished even when people are recovered. They come back too terrified to talk and even the courts have not pursued a particular case to see how a person was picked up or looked into the issue of impunity. The civil administration is either a part of it or is a silent spectator.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2016