Families of Shia missing persons hold protest against Pak govt's role in enforced disappearances

Pakistan's Joint Action Committee (JAC) for Shia missing persons and families held a sit-in protest against the Imran Khan government's involvement in the rising cases of enforced disappearances in the country.

The JAC held a protest on Friday demanding the whereabouts of the missing persons.

According to Dawn, the families of the missing persons said that their sit-in will continue till the recovery of their people. It was said that the authorities, including the President of Pakistan Arif Alvi, have repeatedly assured them regarding the missing persons' recovery but none have kept their promise.

Action Committee leaders attended the protest. They stated that if the missing persons were involved in any crime, they should be brought before the courts. They should not be taken away like this with their families not even knowing whether they were dead or alive, Dawn further reported.

Zaheera, one of the family member of missing people said that her 22-year-old son, Wahid Hussain, went missing on March 21, 2018. "My son had applied to the army and had even cleared all their tests. While he waited for his letter to come from there he was driving a loading pickup truck to earn some money and supplement the household income. He went missing along with the pickup truck. The truck was recovered three months later but not my son. Two days ago completed three full years of his going missing."

Farhat Fatima, another family member of the missing people said that her son Syed Ibad-ul-Hasan Rizvi went missing in 2017. "He worked with a bank here. We only know that he was picked up by [a law-enforcement agency]. We have not heard from him since then. This is his five-year-old son."

Enforced disappearances have been a long stain on Pakistan's human rights record. Despite the pledges of successive governments to criminalise the practice, there has been a very slow movement on legislation, while people continue to be forcibly disappeared with impunity.

Enforced disappearance has been used as a tool by the Pakist state to silence the minority communities. While countless abductees have been killed, many of them are still facing inhuman torture in army secrets cells.

( With inputs from ANI )