Holding the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) responsible for the abduction of people, Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights Chairperson Nasreen Jalil Monday asked the LEAs to conduct an enquiry into the missing persons.
The chairperson opined that the missing persons were not even presented in the court but their tortured corpses used to be found later. She asked that how anyone could obey the law if LEAs themselves did not abide by it.
The committee further observed that cases of several missing persons had not even been registered.
Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Senator Farhatullah Babar was of the view that the Parliament, Supreme Court and other institutions had failed to resolve the issue. “The people involved in abductions are not punished despite the evidence against them,” he further alleged.
The session was attended by officials of the interior ministry, Foreign Office (FO) additional secretary and National Commission on Human Rights Chairman Justice (retired) Ali Nawaz Chohan. Officials from the Inquiry Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP), however, did not attend the session
The Senate committee’s chairperson said that the commission had informed the Senate earlier that its members would not be able to attend to which Senator Babar responded that a notice about the session’s agenda was sent four days ago.
“The commission should have informed the Senate earlier so the meeting could have been rescheduled,” he said.
He also criticised the commission’s performance as well, saying that it had failed in dealing with the issue.
ICMP chairman claimed that it was difficult to take legal action as there were no laws concerning the issue. “Even the definition of missing persons is not clear,” he added.
The committee responded by saying that the Senate had sent its recommendations to the government in December 2016, yet no debate was held in Parliament.
Some senators also claimed that people had gone missing in a “dramatic fashion” from the NA-120 by-polls, to which Senator Nisar Muhammad of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) added that there were political reasons behind the abduction of people from NA-120.
The committee also demanded that a 2012 report on missing persons compiled by Justice Mansoor Kamal be made public, along with a report compiled by the UN’s Working Group on Enforced Disappearances which visited Pakistan the same year. The senators also said that the government must look into the Senate’s draft of recommendations regarding the issue.
