The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances has submitted its report to the Supreme Court of Pakistan for the month of March 2024.
The commission stated that it has received 18 new cases while 2302 case of missing persons are under trial in different courts of the country.
This reports states that this commission has disposed of total 33 cases while 18 missing persons have been detected in different jails and one under detention. The commission has also disposed of eight cases for not being found which in fact is important in respect that who filed those cases and why such act was done.
However the matter of missing persons in Pakistan is such an issue on which everybody comes up with a different number. Interim Prime Minister of Pakistan Anwaarul Haq Kakar in an earlier interview has claimed only fifty people as missing in Pakistan. The Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, a non-profit organization representing family members of those who disappeared in Balochistan, says approximately 7,000 cases have been registered with them since 2004. A non-governmental organization – Defense of Human Rights – in its report for the year 2023 brought overall figure of missing parsons to 3,120.
The interim Prime Minister earlier has stated the issue of missing persons in Pakistan is framed as a human rights and anti-state narrative by the relatives as well as lobbies associated with disappeared persons. The facts however are different and the grey zone between the facts and the accusations is filled by speculations.
The Supreme Court of Pakistan has already acknowledged the severity of this issue in the country observing that Pakistan belongs to everyone living in this with an emphasis to collectively address this concern. The Chief Justice of Pakistan earlier heading a three-member bench—comprising Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Musarrat Hilali and CJP himself has reiterated a commitment to tackle this issue.
The SC in this regard had also observed it conduct searches for missing individuals as the government institutions should take actions. This is not a political matter but a serious case requiring everyone’s responsibility besides to get it resolved systematically, the court had observed. Previously families of missing persons protested at Islamabad but the police arrested them. The protesters were released later at the intervention of court authorities stating that those participating in the sit-in were peacefully protesting, asserting their right to do so. The right to peaceful protest was upheld in the Faizabad sit-in case verdict.
Meanwhile it is also important to note that missing persons is not just a problem in Pakistan, rather its worldwide issue. When a comparison with some other democracies is made in context of reportedly registered cases – around 2300 cases- we find a major difference. Germany, India, Sri Lanka, England and America stand at 11000, 347524, 21374, 241064 and 93718 cases respectively. The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) had stated in its earlier report that due to conflicts, number of missing persons in Yugoslavia, Mexico, Sri Lanka and Iraq was 40000, 86451, 21374 and 1 million respectively.
The number of total missing persons registered by Commission of Enquiry on Enforced Disappearances till January 2024 was 10143 and out of 7832 cases have been resolved leaving 2311 cases unresolved. The resolved cases include individuals who had died in accidents with bodies unclaimed, deaths due to personal vendettas, illegal crossing over to neighboring countries, and individuals who had become part of terrorist outfits.
The Government of Pakistan has dealt with missing persons’ cases with special care offering munificent rehabilitative package to the affected families including those who died fighting Pakistan Army and those whose family members got killed during the conduct of the operations by the military. The issue of missing persons’ identification becomes complex when the unclaimed and unidentifiable bodies are found. According to two Pakistani NGOs dealing with the disposal of the bodies after the accidental deaths i.e. Edhi and Chippa, a total of 35000 unclaimed and unidentified bodies were found between 2005 and 2023. Now no one knows whether those bodies included the persons claimed missing by their relatives.
(Senior journalist Rana Kashif has authored this article)
