The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has expressed alarm over the recent wave of enforced disappearances in Balochistan, including the disappearance of Hafeez Baloch, an MPhil student in the Physics Department of the Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.
HRCP said that Hafeez Baloch was abducted from Khuzdar from a school where he volunteered in his free time. “The sheer brazenness of this act underscores the increasing impunity accorded to perpetrators. Mr Baloch must be recovered immediately and the perpetrators identified must held accountable”, HRCP said.
The rights group said that the government’s past promises of criminalizing enforced disappearances and fixing responsibility on the perpetrators ring hollow. Two students, Faseeh Baloch and Sohail Baloch, were forcibly disappeared in November from their dorm room in the University of Balochistan. Their fellow students held protests for over a month, suspended their academic activities and forced the university shut twice, but to no avail. The authorities turned a deaf ear to their demands and the two students still remain missing.
“HRCP is particularly concerned by the continuing shroud of silence over enforced disappearances in the province, which remains deliberately cut off from the mainstream media. The state must understand that it cannot expect to resolve the legitimate grievances of the Baloch people if it is not prepared to let these grievances see the light of day”, the group said.
It is pertinent to mention that Balochistan has seen a new, alarming wave of enforced disappearances in the past couple of days. Since the twin attacks by the Baloch Liberation Army on FC headquarters in Noshki and Panjgur, the Pakistani forces have reportedly forcibly disappeared tens of individuals from different areas of Balochistan. Rights groups and Baloch nationalists argue that in their utter desperation, the security forces are targeting innocent civilians.