The United Nations mission to review complaints of enforced disappearances in Balochistan arrived here on Saturday amidst protests by hundreds of family members of missing Baloch persons, seeking to divert international organizations’ attention towards human rights abuses in the province.
The UN team met Balochistan Chief Secretary Yaqoob Babar Fateh Mohammad and Home Secretary Naseebullah Khan at the Balochistan Civil Secretariat.
It also separately met delegations of the Baloch Republican Party (BRP), the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), HRCP, Balochistan National Party (Awami), Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) and relatives of more than 100 missing persons, including women and children.
Later talking to reporters, VBMP’s Nasrullah Baloch praised the UN group for taking an initiative for the Baloch missing persons, adding that the families of missing persons had provided the UN mission with a list 2,281 missing persons.
Balochistan High Court Bar Association President Zahoor Ahmad Shahwani said he had informed the group that they had lodged two petitions in the Supreme Court, adding that both petitions were still pending.
Shahwani said he had also apprised the group that some of the parties claimed that the number of the missing persons was more than 12,000 while some put it at 14,000. “The figure of the missing persons may vary but one thing is clear and that is that it is too high,” he said.
Shahwani said three things were emphasized in talks with the UN mission, adding that those were, the issue of missing persons, targeted killings and growing incidents of kidnapping for ransom.
He said he had informed the UN working group that the constitution of Pakistan provided protection to every citizen but no citizen was safe.
Talking to reporters, the leader of the BRP, Bashir Azeem said his party provided a list of 12,000 to 14,000 missing people to the UN group, adding that the list was jointly compiled by the BRP, Balochistan National Movement, and the Baloch Students Organization (Azad).
He said they put the number of those killed at 4,262 and had provided complete data of 2,652 persons to the UN working group.
The BRP leader said there were a number of no-go areas in Balochistan but still people went missing from those districts, adding, “We know the missing persons and their families but the state functionaries claim that they have left for Afghanistan or other places. It is the state’s responsibility that it should know where its citizens have gone or how they left the country, but for their families they have gone missing.”
Bostan Ali, the representative of HDP after calling upon UN group told the reporters that his party’s delegation told the UN group that more than 70,000 persons of their community had been killed and more than 2,000 had been injured in targeted attacks. Meanwhile, the relatives of the missing people, including women and children, staged a protest demonstration outside the Quetta Press Club and later marched to the hotel where the UN group was staying and staged a sit-in for several hours.
The protesters were carrying banners appealing to international organizations to take notice of the human rights violations carried out in Pakistan.
UN mission arrives in Quetta amidst appeals for help
