At least five more persons have ‘gone missing’ from Gwadar in Balochistan over the weekend.
According to local The Balochistan Post (TBP) Correspondent, two persons were offloaded from a bus, whereas, three others were arrested and taken away from a wedding program.
In the first incident on Saturday 28 July, two residents of Tump, Gomazi were offloaded from a bus reportedly by personnel of security forces at Zero Point, Gwadar.
They were identified as Doda s/o Mujeeb Baloch and Sajid s/o Nabi Baksh. Both were travelling to Tump from Karachi.
According to TBP correspondent, the ‘abduction’ was witnessed by more than 30 passengers of the bus.
Later in the evening on Saturday, a similar incident unfolded in another part of Gwadar, where personnel of security forces raided a musical program during a wedding ceremony.
At least three persons were taken away by the forces during the raid in Faqeer Colony, Gwadar.
They were identified as Salman s/o Mehrab, Naveed s/o Ghulam and Faisal Ali Mohammad. All three are residents of Dasht.
It was not clear why the arrests and subsequent disappearances were made, however, ‘abductions’ by security forces in Balochistan have continued to increase.
The term ‘abducted’ is widely used in Balochistan to connote arrests made by security forces as the families of missing persons accuse that arrested are not presented before court of law and instead kept in military camps.
According to Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), a campaign group by families of victims, more than 20,000 Baloch men, women and children are under Pakistani custody. VBMP also alleges that at least 5,000 missing persons have been killed and dumped over last one decade.
International campaign groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also accuse Pakistani security forces as the culprits of ‘illegal abductions in Balochistan’.