'Silence of world community on human rights violations in Balochistan gaveimpunity to Pakistan'

The silence of the world community on the large scale human rights violations in the region of Balochistan has given impunity to Pakistan, according to Waja Siddique Azad, the Secretary-General Baloch Peoples Congress (BPC).

"The silence of the world community on the large scale human rights violations in the region has given impunity to Pakistan to commit all kinds of crimes without being held responsible. The surge in unlawful killings of Baloch people has taken brutality to an unprecedented level," Azad said at a side event on the occasion of the 45th UN Human Rights Council Session here.

"The main victims of this violence are the people of Balochistan who are being systematically targeted by para-military forces sponsored by Pakistan. Thousands of people have gone missing from the region since early 2000," he added.

The BPC General Secretary further said that the disappeared Baloch persons would later be found dead on the roadside which would also include women and children.Further elaborating on the atrocities inflicted by the Pakistan military forces, he said that the people are taken in by the military and kept into isolation "for weeks" and in some cases, "for months".

"The actual number of disappearances might be actually higher. The people never get their missing relatives back or find their discovered bodies. No doubt enforced disappearances have been a dark stain on Pakistan's human rights record despite the pledges of the government but nothing has been done," he added.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) had hit out at Pakistan's Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (COIED), saying it has failed to hold perpetrators responsible for the crime in the last several years.

In 2011, the COIED was formed to trace the whereabouts of missing persons and fix the responsibility of individuals or orgsations responsible for the enforced disappearances.

According to a briefing paper titled 'Entrenching Impunity, Denying Redress: The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances in Pakistan', the ICJ noted that although the COIED had traced the whereabouts of the missing persons in a number of cases, there was no effort to fix the responsibility for the crime.

( With inputs from ANI )