Soldiers, police and intelligence agencies in Pakistan torture and kill abducted activists in a campaign to quash a separatist movement, a rights group said Thursday.
Hundreds of so-called enforced disappearances have been committed since 2005, Human Rights Watch said in a new report into alleged abuses in Balochistan. Victims told HRW that they had been picked up from their homes at night by gangs of armed men, questioned and beaten without being told who was holding them or why.
“Pakistan’s security forces are engaging in an abusive free-for-all in Balochistan as Baloch nationalists and suspected militants ‘disappear,’ and in many cases are executed,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at HRW. The rights group’s report, entitled ‘We Can Torture, Kill, or Keep You for Years’, documented cases of uniformed paramilitary troops, police and the much-feared ISI intelligence agency being involved in the abductions.
The latest 132-page report says state security remains responsible for most of the abuses. This includes holding detainees as young as 12 years old without charge as well as the increasing torture and killing of those held, it says. The report details 45 alleged cases of enforced disappearances, the majority in 2009 and 2010.
It says that while hundreds of people have been forcibly disappeared in Balochistan since 2005, dozens of new enforced disappearances have occurred since Pakistan returned to civilian rule in 2008.
