By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS
Islamabad : Holding placards and raising slogans against Pakistan’s military regime, more than 200 people staged a demonstration in here Thursday evening to draw attention to the plight of hundreds of missing people, alleged to be illegally confined.
Led by Gen (retd) Hameed Gul, former chief of Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), members of civil society and relatives of the missing people shouted slogans against the government and President Pervez Musharraf and accused the government of keeping the ‘missing’ in illegal confinement.
“They should immediately release these people or at least should make public where they are being kept or we would continue our protest and march on streets,” said Gul addressing the gathering.
The rally was held at Aabpara, where about 30 people were killed in a powerful blast last month, amid heavy police security.
Gul told the relatives of the missing people holding pictures and placards that disappearance of people after arrest or forced disappearances had become a routine since the present government took over.
“Enforced disappearances of persons, following illegal arrest, has been a common phenomenon,” said the former ISI chief.
The situation has worsened after the 9/11 terror attack in the US and the government believed that it had a “free hand, due to the war on terror to arrest people and keep them incommunicado for months on end”, he said.
However, President Musharraf told editors of newspapers last month that most of the so-called missing people had left their homes on their own and “may have been killed during their fight along with the extremist elements”.
It is very difficult to ascertain accurate numbers of the disappeared people, but according to the cases filed in different courts, the majority of them in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, a list of about 300 people has been submitted.
Following Supreme Court orders, the government last month released some of the disappeared people, believed to be in the custody of the military intelligence agencies.
But it is claimed by different political and religious organisations that more than 4,000 people remain missing after their arrests.
Pakistan has not ratified or signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, so it does not feel any responsibility in regards to human rights laws and international norms and standards.
However, by being a member of the UN Human Rights Council, Pakistan could be pressured into signing all the protocols and covenant of the human rights charters of the United Nations.
“The Council should also monitor the cases of disappearances in Pakistan and constitute a committee to probe the situation,” said Gul.