The intelligence agencies of the United Arab Emirates reportedly abducted Abdul Hafeez during a raid on his house in the early hours of Thursday. He was moved to an unknown location and his condition remains unknown.
Abdul Hafeez Zehri hails from Khuzdar district of Balochistan, who owns a building maintenance company in Dubai. He is currently residing in Dubai along with his family. The family members told The Balochistan Post that the Emirati intelligence forces raided their house in International City, Dubai, in the middle of the night and forcibly disappeared Abdul Hafeez.
Hafeez’s cousin, Rashid Hussain, was also said to be forcibly disappeared by the Emirati intelligence forces in December 2018. He was kept in custody for six months, and then reportedly extradited to Pakistan without his consent. Rashid was a human rights activist from Balochistan.
It is to mention that Hafeez’s younger brother, Majeed Zehri, was forcibly disappeared, allegedly at the hands of the Pakistani secret services, in 2010, from Khuzdar. He was tortured and killed in confinement and his dead body was recovered on a roadside, in Khuzdar city.
In February 2012, Hafeez’s father Haji Ramzan Zehri was shot killed in Khuzdar, allegedly by the Pakistani intelligence agencies.
The war-like situation in Balochistan and ubiquitous insecurity have forced thousands of Baloch families to relocate to different countries around the world to seek asylum. Activists argue that with a little help from China, the Pakistani intelligence agencies are hunting down Baloch activists. Sajid Hussain, a journalist, was found dead in Sweden in March 2020 under mysterious circumstances. Activist and student leader Karima Baloch was also found dead in Toronto, Canada, in December 2020.
The trend is only climbing — Abdul Hafeez’s disappearance has once again alarmed the Baloch diaspora overseas. Activists, journalists and asylum-seekers are concerned that a similar fate might be in store for them.