The spokesperson of BHRO, in a statement, said that the state authorities have confessed many times that the missing persons are in their custody and will not be released until they pass through the legal process. The statement was issued in the reaction of Director-General of Inter-Services, Major General Asif Ghafoor’s statement in which he claimed that not all missing persons are in their custody, some were killed and some fled to Afghanistan.
The spokesperson said that the military should also provide the number of enforced disappeared persons in their custody, under which legal process they are passing through and under which state law their whereabouts are undisclosed and they are being deprived of their legal rights to defend themselves. On the contrary, the detainees are subjected to inhuman torture and in many cases, their mutilated bodies were found dumped.
Many Baloch political activists including social media activists, students, laborers, and farmers are missing for a decade now and their families are peacefully protesting for years from the platform of Voice for Baloch Missing and Baloch Human Rights Organization for the safe recovery of their loved ones but in these 10 years none of the disappeared people were presented in courts. Instead, mutilated bodies of thousands of enforced disappeared persons were dumped and hundreds of them end up in mass graves.
Many Baloch mothers and sisters including Sammi Baloch, Seema Baloch, Ali Haider Baloch and Farzana Majeed Baloch have been continuously demanding in protests to present their loved ones in courts that if they have committed and punish them accordingly but till now, the state authorities in Balochistan have neither presented a single person of enforced disappearances in the court nor acted according to the law and constitution.
The state officials have claimed in various statements that the issue of enforced disappeared persons has resolved to a large extent. But on the contrary of the state claims, security forces are continuously abducting people.
The spokesperson further said that the families of missing persons are living a miserable life spending most years of their life protesting for the recovery of their loved ones but instead of listening to them, the state authorities are trying to suppress them. If the state authorities have sympathy and can understand the pain through which the families of missing persons of Balochistan going through, then they must bring the missing persons in the court and hold accountable those who are involved in the enforced disappearances in Balochistan. We appeal to the state officials that disappearing people in Balochistan is a serious issue and to solve this, it’s necessary to stop the enforced disappearances and present them in courts and relieve the families from the constant pain they had been going through.
