February 14th marked the one year anniversary of the “enforced disappearance” of Hassan and Hizbullah Qambrani. Activists and civilians in Quetta held a demonstration to remember the missing Qambrani brothers. The participants carried placards that bore messages against enforced disappearances.
According to the details, a demonstration was organized in Quetta on Sunday to mark the first anniversary of the disappearances of Hassan and Hizbullah Qambrani. A significant number of women, children and students attended the demonstration and demanded the government to recover the missing cousins.
Hassan and Hizbullah Qambrani were reportedly “forcibly” disappeared from Quetta on February 14th, 2020. To mark the first anniversary of their disappearance, activists also carried out a campaign on social media which has been trending in the country for hours now.
Haseeba Qambrani, sister of Hassan Qambrani, addressed the demonstration, saying that she has been roaming on the streets of Quetta in pursuit of justice for a year. She said that the year has been tough – she and her mother have met with many influential people and seen the “horrible” faces of the people. We visited the courts and the commission, she said, we know what “tyranny” is.
Haseeba Qambrani said that I have witnessed the devastation of a family – we have received the mutilated and bruised dead bodies of two of our loved ones. She said that she stood her ground in her struggle for the recovery of her brothers because she couldn’t bear seeing another family being devastated.
She said that she’s been suffering for a year now – there are families out there who have been suffering for more than a decade. “We wake up only when nothing is left; we wake up only to grieve.”
She said that I have been pursuing justice for a year now; I’ve been told to keep quiet and not speak. I do not know where this struggle will take me, she said.
Representatives of the Balochistan National Party and the National Party also addressed the gathering. They said that if the missing persons are culpable, they must be produced before the courts per the constitution of the country. If they are found guilty, then they should be punished. But the government has no right to keep them in confinement for years and leave their families to suffer.
“There has always been a master-slave relationship between the state and the Baloch”, they said.
In the federal capital Islamabad, the families of the Baloch missing persons have pitched a protest camp in front of the Islamabad Press Club. The camp has completed its fourth day of protest. The families are asking the government to recover the Baloch missing persons. Prominent activists like the PTM Chairman Manzoor Pashteen, Pashtun leader and MNA Moshin Dawar, rights activist Afrasiab Khattak and several others have visited the camp in the past few days and expressed their solidarity with the families of the victims.
The families told The Balochistan Post that they are yet to hear from the prime minister of Pakistan or any of his representatives.