Nasrullah Baloch, the chairman of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, said in a statement on Saturday that the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, a Pakistani body formed in 2011 to probe enforced disappearances and trace their culprits, has further complicated the issue of enforced disappearances.
Nasrullah Baloch said that a thorough assessment of the Commission’s eleven-year performance lays bare the reality: The Commission has disposed off the cases of enforced disappearances backed by substantial evidence, without any judicial inquiry. The Commission is probing the cases where evidence is scant, further complicating the issue of enforced disappearances, he said.
The VBMP chairman said that Commission was formed to probe the cases of enforced disappearances, fix responsibility on the culprits and recommend the government, so that the government can legislate accordingly and put an end to this unconstitutional crime. Instead, the Commission failed to serve its purpose in eleven years. It formed ersatz Joint Investigation Teams that failed to deliver genuine results, and consistently humiliated the family members of the missing persons, plunging them into severe mental agony, he said.
Nasrullah Baloch said that the Commission’s members fail to appreciate the woes of the family members of the missing persons. The disappearances of their loved ones – who are mostly the sole breadwinners of the family – has pushed them into psychological and financial difficulties. They in-debt themselves to travel to various cities and raise voice for their missing loved ones. The Commission is complicating the issue of enforced disappearances, inflicting server mental agony on their family members, he concluded.