EDITORIAL: As tens of thousands had taken to the streets on Tuesday to protest the arrest of PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) chairman Imran Khan, Anwar Zeb too was also on a street of Swat but for a different cause.
“My son was taken into custody by security forces in 2009, and later a military court sentenced him to a 10-year imprisonment, but over 15 years have passed and my son is still in jail. I am an old man and must look after my wife and four children”.
Holding a photo of a young man, another elderly man said his son was picked up about 16 years ago; he then had a one-year-old daughter, who is now 15-year-old and waiting for her father who has completed his 10-year imprisonment, but he is still in jail. “Since my husband and son had been taken away, I’m sleepless”, bemoaned an old woman.
These ill-fated persons were part of a demonstration held at the Kabal Chowk, blasting the authorities for neither presenting their dear ones in courts nor setting them free despite orders by the higher judiciary.
The protest was organised by Defence of Human Rights and Public Service Trust whose provincial coordinator Aftab Ali Shah maintained that hundreds of people who had been picked up from different parts of Swat since 2009 are languishing in prisons of Mardan, Kohat, Peshawar and Haripur without any access to justice. Some of them died during their imprisonment, but about 500 of them are said to be still languishing in prisons despite the fact that they have been ‘exonerated by courts’.
The case of missing persons is essentially a challenge to the constitutional protection of Fundamental Rights that tend to ensure that personal freedom is the birthright of a person and in no way can it be violated. If someone has to be taken into custody that has to be strictly in accordance with law and at the order of a court. But in Pakistan a very large number of young men have disappeared without a trace and their families are unable to find them.
Of course, there are quite a few laws on missing persons – more relevantly called enforced disappearances – on the statute book and cases get registered with police and heard and decided by courts, but the curse refuses to die down. While some of the missing persons were sold out to the US by the then Musharraf government for dollars, a large number are still on the national soil – dead or alive; about this, however, there is no hard information.
It’s not the law that can help solve the problem of missing persons; it got to be the national creed and authorities’ perception that even the most notorious anti-state person is not what he is known to be, but is so only after the court finds him to be anti-state. And once he has done his time in prison he should be instantly released.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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