EDITORIAL: The performance of the commission of inquiry on enforced disappearances — which informed the Supreme Court that 744 production orders were issued but only 52 have been carried out — says it all.
More than a decade after the commission was established “to trace missing persons and fix responsibility on individuals and/or organisations responsible for it”, families of those missing persons and lawyers fighting their cases remain strongly dissatisfied with it.
But now that the chief justice has decided to “solve this problem once and for all”, there might be some light at the end of this long, dark tunnel after all.
The apex court needs to make sure that at least two aspects of this sad story are dealt with comprehensively.
One is the legal side of it, of course, because, the people being picked up so often and for so long, up and down the country, flies in the face of Pakistan’s democratic credentials and is also a singular insult to the rule of law.
No doubt some of these cases may well be about people dying in drone strikes in KP (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), and some, like the commission says, about people simply leaving the county without informing their families.
But where there’s smoke there’s fire, so the existence of those cases where people were allegedly picked up by security agencies, without due legal process, must also be acknowledged and handled accordingly.
It’s already a shame that such incidents have not rattled the conscience of the powers that be to warrant effective action so far.
All that is left to be done, after all, is for the Supreme Court to put its foot down and all agencies will duly line up with whatever information they possess about the so many missing persons whose families continue to remain in agony wondering about their fate.
And that — the anguish of their families — is the second thing that the court must look into. Even in the best-case scenario where all missing persons miraculously return to their homes, who will compensate their loved ones for their long years of misery? It’s one thing to lose a family member, because once they’ve been put interned, the healing process can begin; at the very least. It’s an entirely different matter when a family member suddenly vanishes because they continue to hope that by way of a miracle they would one day reappear.
Who will speak for them? And why is this crucial aspect considered so peripheral? Even this time, when wives, mothers, and children of missing persons marched all the way from Turbat to Islamabad, they were greeted with baton charges, water cannons, and tear gas; not to mention the otherwise very aggressive attitude of the police.
Lately, the Supreme Court has been hinting at a strong desire to right some of the wrongs of the past.
Surely, their lordships understand that the issue of missing persons is among the most grievous wrongs ever suffered by Pakistanis.
For, so long as even one person is missing without proper explanation, nobody in the entire country is safe. And it’s now up to the apex court to “solve this problem once and for all”.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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