HYDERABAD: Activists of the Sindh Human Rights Defenders Network (SHRDN) on Friday said Pakistan should sign the law on enforced disappearances because “a state within a state cannot be tolerated”. Those found responsible for such disappearances must be brought to justice, they stressed.

Speaking at a news conference at the local press club on Friday, Zulfikar Halepoto, Ali Palh and Zulfikar Qadir expressed their concern over such incidents and lawlessness in Sindh.

They said enforced disappearance was a serious violation of human rights.

They said cases of missing persons had started emerging in Sindh in 1999. A commission on enforced disappearances was formed which received around 7,000 complaints, they noted. They said the commission headed by a retired judge claimed to have resolved around 5,000 cases and closed another 2,000 or so. They questioned working of the commission, complaining that its performance was not satisfactory.

They noted that a political activist, Majid Hyderi, went missing recently while many such cases were reported from different parts of the province in recent months. “This wave of enforced disappearance is in fact a challenge to the elected government and puts a question mark on governance,” they remarked.

According to them, Majid Hyderi is a known political activist, and claimed that he was picked up by some law enforcers on Feb 4 in Karachi’s Gulistan-i-Jauhar area and since then his whereabouts remained unknown.

They regretted that Hyderi had not been produced in a court of law as yet.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2023