SUKKUR: As part of the ongoing series of 72-hour hunger strikes at district headquarters organised by the Voice for Missing Persons of Sindh (VMPS), activists of various nationalist groups and civil society organisations on Saturday pitched a camp outside the Sukkur Press Club to demand “recovery of over 160 victims of enforced disappearance” missing after allegedly being picked up by law enforcers over the past few years.

Such protests have already been held in Karachi, Hyderabad, Larkana, Thatta and Nawabshah earlier this month. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Human Rights Coordination Council (HRCC) and several other rights bodies have extended their full support to the VMPS campaign and their activists, along with those of the Sindh United Party (SUP), Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM) and its other factions, Jeay Sindh Tehreek (JST) and its other factions, Sindh Taraqqi-pasand Party (STP), Sindhi Adabi Sangat, Awami Workers Party (AWP), Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP), Jagirta Forum (JF), Sindh Progressive Forum (SPF) and Rawadari Tehreek (RT) are observing hunger strike at various camps.

At the Sukkur camp, leaders of these organisations and nationalist groups called for immediate intervention by the judiciary and other state institutions for the recovery of the missing activists. They condemned police action against campaigners for the cause in Karachi and Islamabad last week and vowed to continue their struggle despite such oppression.

A delegation of lawyers led by Sukkur District Bar Association president Shafqat Raheem Rajput and general secretary Sohail Khoso, senior activists of the participating organisations as well as literati, including Rauf Paras Dayo and Sarang Mahar visited the camp and expressed solidarity with the missing persons’ families.

Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2018