QUETTA, June 6: The Human Right Commission of Pakistan has urged the government to seek UN help to rehabilitate 1.5 million internally-displaced people.

Addressing a press conference here on Friday, HRCP’s secretary-general I.A. Rehman said: “Most of the internally-displaced people belong to Balochistan and they are in dire need.”

They were in such dire need that many children had to sell their kidneys, he said.

Mr Rehman was accompanied by former chairperson of the HRCP Tahir Mohammad Khan and Zahoor Ahmed Shahwani.

He said that the number of missing people had suddenly increased in 2004, and half of them disappeared from Balochistan where Al Qaeda or Taliban elements did not exist.

He said that the HRCP had presented a list of 240 missing people in the Supreme Court after which the government produced 99 missing people but most of them were unwilling to talk about how they were treated during their confinement.

He demanded that the government should release the recovered people and their statements should be recorded, so that perpetrators of such a heinous crime could be brought to justice.

Criticising people’s apathy towards the situation in Balochistan, he said that the Baloch people were facing the same level of aggression as the people in Swat but people killed in Swat “are considered to be ‘Shaheeds’ while people killed in Balochistan are not”.

Mr Rehman said that about 10,000 Pakistanis were languishing in jails in various Gulf states and urged the government to appoint a human rights officer to check violations, adding that Pakistani prisoners continued to suffer in India despite court orders for their immediate repatriation.

Reiterating the demand for immediate reinstatement of the deposed judges, he said that the HRCP had presented its 16-point demands to the prime minister that included making the working of intelligence agencies transparent and holding them accountable to elected representatives.