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| Baloch Society Of North America (BSO_NA) Baloch Society Of North America (BSO_NA) is Non-Profit Organization, working to unite and Organize all Baloch in North America, to expose the Occupation of our land (Balochistan) and exploitations of our resources by Pakistani and Iranian Governments, and to bring their Human Rights Violations in Balochistan into the world’s Notice. |
'War on Terror' an Excuse for
Disappearances
KARACHI, Dec 6 (IPS) - "A taste of their own medicine
would be the best punishment for these people," says
Mohammad Atif, 23, when asked how agents of the state
who kidnapped and detained him for two years should be
punished. "The only problem is no one can touch these
people."
A victim of ''enforced disappearance, '' an euphemism
for kidnappings carried out by military spy agencies,
Atif, a student of the Quaid-e-Azam Open University,
lost two precious years. He told IPS that he was
picked up while on his way home from college on Aug.
3, 2004 and freed only on Nov. 27 this year.
Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia researcher for the New
York-based Human Rights Watch, says: "The Pakistani
military, the principal human rights violator in the
country, enjoys total impunity for its actions.
Practices such as disappearances and torture are used
routinely to quash political dissent, intimidate and
terrorise its opponents and maintain its control.''
During his detention, Atif "met" or "heard about''
others on a list of missing people compiled by Amina
Janjua that includes the name of her own husband
Masood Ahmed Janjua who was picked up in July 2005,
for alleged links with the al-Qaeda. Atif said most
are young, "about my age" and "religiously inclined''.
The government seems to have washed its hands off
Amina's husband's case, with Col. Imran Yaqub,
director for operations in the interior ministry,
telling a Supreme Court bench that they have been
unable to locate Masood and suspect he may have "gone
to Afghanistan. " But Amina insists that she has been
assured privately by various higher officials that he
is "in Pakistan, alive and well" and that he is being
detained in a military detention centre in
Pakistan-administer ed Kashmir".
"If people from the ministry know where he is, and if
they can tell me he is alive, why cannot they find
him?" asks a helpless Amina.
In August 2006, a petition was submitted in the
Supreme Court by Amina and Zainab Khatoon, a mother
whose son went missing along with Amina's husband,
seeking information regarding the whereabouts of 16
missing persons.
Their families have come together on a joint forum --
Defence of Human Rights -- to locate their loved ones.
Their list includes 41 missing people.
Numbers have given strength and visibility to the
campaign. Media reporting of their demonstrations
outside the parliament, the Supreme Court and interior
ministry has also kept the issue from being swept
under the carpet by the government.
On Nov. 10, the Court ordered the government to
recover the missing persons and apprise the families
about their whereabouts by Dec. 1. "On the next date
of hearing, no excuse will be acceptable.. ." Chief
Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhury had reportedly
said. To pacify the apex court, the government
produced 20 persons, ten of whom have since returned
home. Still hedging, the government requested the
court to dismiss the case as, even after "hectic
efforts," it was unable to locate the remaining 21
people.
Rebuking the government, the judge said the government
should have done more and taken the investigation to
the "highest level''. "If they are citizens of
Pakistan, you are duty-bound to find out where they
are and the exercise should continue till the
objective is achieved; till all those missing have
been traced and brought home safely," he said.
He ordered the government to provide details of the 21
missing people at the next hearing scheduled for
Dec.15.
Having made profiles of all the 41 victims, Amina
concludes that "all come from a fairly religious
background, are simple, middle-class people who do not
have connections at the top nor very resourceful' '.
The families blame the ‘war on terror' for these
enforced disappearances. "We're labelled extremists
and treated differently for our beliefs. Our way of
life is considered an aberration in our own country,
which professes to be an Islamic Republic," says
Mohammad, 17, son of Masood Janjua, who can recite the
Holy Quran from memory.
Atif, who was interrogated continuously for 20 days,
and intermittently afterwards, confirms this. "Yes I
was asked about my alleged links to al-Qaeda."
Mohammad Siddique, 73, from Kotri in Sindh, who was
released after 27 days, but whose son and son-in-law
remain in custody for "terrorist activity", says the
same. "They asked me why I went for jihad to
Afghanistan in the 1980s. I told them I did it because
it is mandatory for every Muslim," says the
white-bearded septuagenarian.
While most wives and mothers just "want their loved
ones back unharmed", Sohail Faraz, 29, brother of the
missing Faisal Faraz, says angrily: "I want my brother
back with the guarantee that this will never happen
again, to him or anyone. They have to pay for this."
Faisal, described as a pony-tailed, fun-loving young
student who suddenly decided to join a religious
group, would go away for long durations to learn the
Islamic way of life. "We had no problems with this
change in him. He was a good person and this made him
better still. And why is this even considered a reason
to be picked up? He has not violated any laws of the
country. Even if they suspect something, they should
take the legal recourse," adds Faraz.
"The official explanation to taking legal course is
that investigation of serious crime and interrogation
of suspects takes longer than the time allowed by
'legal process' which supposedly hampers probe,'' says
I.A. Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission
of Pakistan (HRCP).
But what do the agencies stand to gain by picking up
seemingly innocent people? "Perhaps the intelligence
agencies pick up 'suspects' because they are under
pressure to perform," remarks Rehman. "Pakistani
authorities have presented figures suggesting that
more than 1,000 terrorism suspects have been arrested
since 2001.''
‘'The Pakistani government has processed only a
fraction of the cases through the legal system," adds
Hasan. Amnesty International in its report ‘Human
Rights Ignored in the War on Terror', made public in
September, reiterated that the lure of rewards has led
to illegal arrests and disappearance with hundreds of
suspects being handed over to the U.S.
Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in his
memoir ‘In the Line of Fire', released earlier this
year, acknowledges that Pakistan had captured 689
al-Qaeda terror suspects and turned over 369 of them
to Washington thereby earning for the country
‘'millions of dollars,'' in bounty money.
And yet all those who have disappeared are not linked
to the ‘war on terror.' Because of the clandestine
nature of the arrests, it is impossible to know the
exact number of people who have disappeared. According
to data collected by the HRCP, of the 600 people that
have 'disappeared' over the past five years most are
"Baloch nationalists, Sindhi dissidents and even
sectarian leaders", from the southern provinces.
"The greatest number of disappearances, it seems, have
taken place in Balochistan, " agrees Hasan, adding
that ‘'there are no large financial incentives on offer.
He adds regretfully that while the U.S. bounty system
may have encouraged such practices, "the fact is that
along with torture, illegal detention, harassment,
blackmail and extra-judicial executions,
disappearances are now part of standard practice by
Pakistani law enforcement and intelligence agencies.''
ramratan chatterjee <> wrote:
Dear Ramratan: Thanks for the valuable information
about disappearances and human rights violations of
Pakistani authorities in Balochistan and Sindh.
Ameeri
Disappearances
KARACHI, Dec 6 (IPS) - "A taste of their own medicine
would be the best punishment for these people," says
Mohammad Atif, 23, when asked how agents of the state
who kidnapped and detained him for two years should be
punished. "The only problem is no one can touch these
people."
A victim of ''enforced disappearance, '' an euphemism
for kidnappings carried out by military spy agencies,
Atif, a student of the Quaid-e-Azam Open University,
lost two precious years. He told IPS that he was
picked up while on his way home from college on Aug.
3, 2004 and freed only on Nov. 27 this year.
Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia researcher for the New
York-based Human Rights Watch, says: "The Pakistani
military, the principal human rights violator in the
country, enjoys total impunity for its actions.
Practices such as disappearances and torture are used
routinely to quash political dissent, intimidate and
terrorise its opponents and maintain its control.''
During his detention, Atif "met" or "heard about''
others on a list of missing people compiled by Amina
Janjua that includes the name of her own husband
Masood Ahmed Janjua who was picked up in July 2005,
for alleged links with the al-Qaeda. Atif said most
are young, "about my age" and "religiously inclined''.
The government seems to have washed its hands off
Amina's husband's case, with Col. Imran Yaqub,
director for operations in the interior ministry,
telling a Supreme Court bench that they have been
unable to locate Masood and suspect he may have "gone
to Afghanistan. " But Amina insists that she has been
assured privately by various higher officials that he
is "in Pakistan, alive and well" and that he is being
detained in a military detention centre in
Pakistan-administer ed Kashmir".
"If people from the ministry know where he is, and if
they can tell me he is alive, why cannot they find
him?" asks a helpless Amina.
In August 2006, a petition was submitted in the
Supreme Court by Amina and Zainab Khatoon, a mother
whose son went missing along with Amina's husband,
seeking information regarding the whereabouts of 16
missing persons.
Their families have come together on a joint forum --
Defence of Human Rights -- to locate their loved ones.
Their list includes 41 missing people.
Numbers have given strength and visibility to the
campaign. Media reporting of their demonstrations
outside the parliament, the Supreme Court and interior
ministry has also kept the issue from being swept
under the carpet by the government.
On Nov. 10, the Court ordered the government to
recover the missing persons and apprise the families
about their whereabouts by Dec. 1. "On the next date
of hearing, no excuse will be acceptable.. ." Chief
Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhury had reportedly
said. To pacify the apex court, the government
produced 20 persons, ten of whom have since returned
home. Still hedging, the government requested the
court to dismiss the case as, even after "hectic
efforts," it was unable to locate the remaining 21
people.
Rebuking the government, the judge said the government
should have done more and taken the investigation to
the "highest level''. "If they are citizens of
Pakistan, you are duty-bound to find out where they
are and the exercise should continue till the
objective is achieved; till all those missing have
been traced and brought home safely," he said.
He ordered the government to provide details of the 21
missing people at the next hearing scheduled for
Dec.15.
Having made profiles of all the 41 victims, Amina
concludes that "all come from a fairly religious
background, are simple, middle-class people who do not
have connections at the top nor very resourceful' '.
The families blame the ‘war on terror' for these
enforced disappearances. "We're labelled extremists
and treated differently for our beliefs. Our way of
life is considered an aberration in our own country,
which professes to be an Islamic Republic," says
Mohammad, 17, son of Masood Janjua, who can recite the
Holy Quran from memory.
Atif, who was interrogated continuously for 20 days,
and intermittently afterwards, confirms this. "Yes I
was asked about my alleged links to al-Qaeda."
Mohammad Siddique, 73, from Kotri in Sindh, who was
released after 27 days, but whose son and son-in-law
remain in custody for "terrorist activity", says the
same. "They asked me why I went for jihad to
Afghanistan in the 1980s. I told them I did it because
it is mandatory for every Muslim," says the
white-bearded septuagenarian.
While most wives and mothers just "want their loved
ones back unharmed", Sohail Faraz, 29, brother of the
missing Faisal Faraz, says angrily: "I want my brother
back with the guarantee that this will never happen
again, to him or anyone. They have to pay for this."
Faisal, described as a pony-tailed, fun-loving young
student who suddenly decided to join a religious
group, would go away for long durations to learn the
Islamic way of life. "We had no problems with this
change in him. He was a good person and this made him
better still. And why is this even considered a reason
to be picked up? He has not violated any laws of the
country. Even if they suspect something, they should
take the legal recourse," adds Faraz.
"The official explanation to taking legal course is
that investigation of serious crime and interrogation
of suspects takes longer than the time allowed by
'legal process' which supposedly hampers probe,'' says
I.A. Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission
of Pakistan (HRCP).
But what do the agencies stand to gain by picking up
seemingly innocent people? "Perhaps the intelligence
agencies pick up 'suspects' because they are under
pressure to perform," remarks Rehman. "Pakistani
authorities have presented figures suggesting that
more than 1,000 terrorism suspects have been arrested
since 2001.''
‘'The Pakistani government has processed only a
fraction of the cases through the legal system," adds
Hasan. Amnesty International in its report ‘Human
Rights Ignored in the War on Terror', made public in
September, reiterated that the lure of rewards has led
to illegal arrests and disappearance with hundreds of
suspects being handed over to the U.S.
Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in his
memoir ‘In the Line of Fire', released earlier this
year, acknowledges that Pakistan had captured 689
al-Qaeda terror suspects and turned over 369 of them
to Washington thereby earning for the country
‘'millions of dollars,'' in bounty money.
And yet all those who have disappeared are not linked
to the ‘war on terror.' Because of the clandestine
nature of the arrests, it is impossible to know the
exact number of people who have disappeared. According
to data collected by the HRCP, of the 600 people that
have 'disappeared' over the past five years most are
"Baloch nationalists, Sindhi dissidents and even
sectarian leaders", from the southern provinces.
"The greatest number of disappearances, it seems, have
taken place in Balochistan, " agrees Hasan, adding
that ‘'there are no large financial incentives on offer.
He adds regretfully that while the U.S. bounty system
may have encouraged such practices, "the fact is that
along with torture, illegal detention, harassment,
blackmail and extra-judicial executions,
disappearances are now part of standard practice by
Pakistani law enforcement and intelligence agencies.''
ramratan chatterjee <> wrote:
Dear Ramratan: Thanks for the valuable information
about disappearances and human rights violations of
Pakistani authorities in Balochistan and Sindh.
Ameeri