UN mission urges Pakistan to act on enforced disappearances

The United Nations Working Group on Enforced Disappearances on Thursday while acknowledging the occurrence of incidents of enforced disappearances across Pakistan, recommended the government improve the situation at the earliest.
Addressing a news conference after concluding its first visit to Pakistan, Chair-Rapporteur Olivier de Frouville and Osman El-Hajj of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced Disappearances pointed out that the group was informed by most of the affected families that in many cases, the security agencies, including police, Frontier Corps, Inter-Services Intelligence and the Military Intelligence were allegedly involved in the abductions. Frouville said the commission was informed that in Balochistan, reportedly 14,000 persons were missing but the provincial government recognized less than a hundred missing. He said the commission had more than 500 cases in its docket concerning the whole country.
Frouville said some of the meetings that the working group had requested with a number of important actors at the federal and provincial levels did not take place, including those with the law minister, defense minister, chief justice of Pakistan, directorate for ISI, Frontier Corps Balochistan IG, Frontier Corps Khyber Pakhtunkhwa IG and the CJ’s of Lahore, Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar high courts.
He urged the government to guarantee the safety of those the commission had met and to protect them against any form of reprisals, threats or intimidations. “The human rights violations in the name of the fight against terrorism does not achieve its aim but can only, on the contrary, lead to further violations,” Frouville said.
To a question, he underlined the need for reinforcing the commission of inquiry on enforced disappearances, as well as to ensure the oversight and the accountability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, as well as providing protection to the victims and the witnesses. To another question, Frouville said the analysis of the information received during their visit would be considered in preparing the report, which would be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council at a session in 2013.
In their recommendations, the UN working group urged the government to set up an officially recognized place of detention, to reinforce the commission of inquiry allowing it for parallel hearings, to assist families to meet the commission in absence of law enforcement agency members, to include the new crime of enforced disappearances in criminal code, ensure fair trial and punishment for perpetrators, to suspend the perpetrators, including army officers, from their official duties during the probe, to ensure accountability of law enforcement agencies, to train law enforcement and intelligence agencies in human rights field, ensure protection of witness and relatives of abducted persons, to provide financial aid to relatives of missing persons and to ratify the convention for protection of all persons against enforced disappearances. The UN working group said that if requested, the UN and other international organizations would stand ready to provide technical assistance and consultancy for implementing the working group recommendations.