Senator Farhatullah Babar on Tuesday asked the civil society activists and people at large to pressurise political parties to collectively address the issue of enforced disappearances. Addressing a seminar in connection with "International Week of the Disappeared", Babar said that security establishment is often blamed but it is also a fact that political parties lack a will to criminalise enforced disappearances or regulate state agencies through legislation.
Civil society must ask political parties as to what prevents them from collectively deliberating on enforced disappearances and find a solution, he said. Some years ago only those allegedly involved in anti-state activities were found to have disappeared involuntarily mostly in Balochistan and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), he said. Now people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Sindh and even in Islamabad are disappearing involuntarily, he said. "There is another disturbing reality. Bloggers and social media activists challenging the state security narrative have also disappeared in different parts of the country including Islamabad," he said.
The PPPP spokesperson said that it is extremely alarming that till today not a single perpetrator of the crime has been held to account. Sometime back, the Senate unanimously adopted the half a dozen recommendations made by its human rights committee, he said. These included legislation to criminalise enforced disappearances, bringing state agencies under some law and signing the Convention on Enforced Disappearances. However, no action was taken by the government, he added.
He said that irked by this situation, the Senate late last year asked the government to satisfy a bipartisan oversight committee as to why it failed to implement the recommendations. He said that it decided if a bipartisan oversight committee was satisfied with the reply, it will share it with the House. If not, then all the parliamentary parties' leaders will submit as private member's bill, the legislation proposed by the human rights committee, he said about the decision of the Senate Committee of the Whole.
Babar said that the issue of enforced disappearances cannot be separated from the curbs of freedom of expression through misuse of cyber crime law. If the right of expression continues to be curbed in the name of national security, it may not be possible even to hold such events to protest against enforced disappearances, he warned.
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