Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Nawaz Sharif, while expressing concern over the growing number of missing persons in the country, said on Tuesday that there was no room for such activities in a civilised country like Pakistan.
Addressing a ceremony to distribute funds among the families of the missing persons, Nawaz said that Pakistan resembled Israel in the way that innocent people were being kidnapped.
He reiterated that hundreds of Pakistanis had been taken into custody without any law, and that if there was any evidence against any of them, then they should be brought in courts. He said that although money could not compensate the misery of the missing persons, he would try to ease their problems by asking the Punjab chief minister to provide stipends to the aggrieved families. He noted that no financial assistance from abroad could justify the phenomenon of missing persons in Pakistan. He said that he was aware of the pains of the missing persons, as he had also gone through the same experience when he was abducted from the Prime Minister’s House and was kept at a place his family did not know about.
He demanded that the missing persons should be allowed to meet their family members once in a week. He lauded the work of Amna Masood Janjua in the cause of missing persons. He said that several people had gone missing since 2010, and that such incidents were a dilemma. He also expressed sympathies for the children of the merchant navy officers whose ship had been hijacked by Somali pirates.
