ISLAMABAD: Amnesty International has urged the government to immediately release forcibly disappeared people or promptly bring them before a judge in a civil court of law to prove the lawfulness of their arrest or detention.

In a report titled, ‘Braving the Storm: Enforced Disappearances and the Right to Protest’, released on Thursday, the human rights watchdog said the government should immediately inform all detainees of the reasons for their arrest or detention and provide them with full information about their rights, including prompt access to a lawyer to challenge the legality of their detention.

“The government should ensure that prompt, thorough, independent and impartial criminal investigations are conducted into all allegations of enforced disappearances. Where sufficient admissible evidence exists, prosecute those suspected of criminal responsibility in civilian courts in proceedings that conform to international fair trial standards.

“Any independent and impartial investigation would preclude state agencies accused of involvement in alleged violations from investigating their own personnel or affiliates,” the human rights watchdog said.

“The government should also ensure that investigations, and any prosecutions, are not limited to direct perpetrators but also address the criminal liability of those suspected of ordering, soliciting, planning, instigating, conspiring to commit, aiding or abetting, or otherwise assisting or facilitating commission of such crimes, as well as superiors who knew or should have known that a subordinate was committing or about to commit a crime but did not take all the reasonable and necessary measures within their power to prevent, repress or punish the crime,” the report says.

On the right to peaceful assembly of people, the Amnesty asked the government to facilitate and guarantee the right to freedom of peaceful assembly of people in protest rallies without discrimination.

It (the government) should not use arbitrary detention, the registration of FIRs against peaceful protesters, and arrest of people for simply exercising their right to peaceful protest, the watchdog said.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2022