There has been a flurry of activity over the missing persons issue, and though there have been assurances aplenty from various governmental figures, it is by no means certain that the issue will be resolved. The highlight of the activity on Friday was Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s appearance before the Islamabad High Court, and he told the court that a committee was investigating the matter and had held six meetings, and promised that the missing persons would be reunited with their families. Meanwhile, that committee, headed by Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and comprising five other ministers, went to Quetta the day before, where it met families of missing persons, and persuaded them to end the strike they had been conducting for the last 50 days in the heart of the city.
That visit illustrates a problem of perception. The issue started during the War on Terror, and is indeed 21 years old, as the Law mInister told the IHC. However, it is now being seen as primarily a Balochistan problem, because this method, which was used against militants, was then used against Baloch by local agencies. Some were indeed militants, some separatists, but many were simply politically prominent. As an affected family member said, if they were guilty of a crime, there should be produced before a court and tried, but as the IHC observed, their forced disappearances were violations of the Constitution.
The problem seems to be that the only persons willing to raise the issue were Baloch MNAs. While Baloch society has suffered grievously from this problem, they are not alone. There have been protests in Lahore and Swat, which indicate how far the disturbance is. Successive Prime Ministers, with Mr Sharif being the sixth, have promised to resolve the issue, but without success. It is almost as if someone’s blushes were being spared. There seems no sense in keeping a lid on the issue, now that the War on Terror is over. The detenus’ families need some form of closure. Ideally, they should be reunited with their loved ones, but even being told of a grave would be better than the present silence. Children have grown up without fathers, parents have gone to graves. This nightmare must end, both for the detenus and those who wait endlessly for them.
