Nearly eight years after Rashid Hussain Baloch disappeared, his family says it remains trapped in what his niece described as a continuing cycle of “separation, waiting and injustice.”
Rashid Hussain, a Baloch political activist, had left Balochistan because of the political situation and was living in exile in the United Arab Emirates when he disappeared on December 26, 2018, according to his family.
The family says he was unlawfully transferred to Pakistan about six months later and subjected to enforced disappearance for a second time.
Speaking at a press conference during a visit to the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) protest camp in Quetta, Mahzeb Baloch said seven years had passed since her uncle’s reported transfer to Pakistan, but he had neither been publicly produced before a court nor had the family received any information about his whereabouts.
She said Pakistani authorities had initially claimed that Rashid Hussain had been arrested and brought to the country, but later denied their own position. Despite his reported transfer, she added, no case had been publicly presented against him and he had never been produced before a court.
The family has repeatedly called on authorities either to release him or produce him before a court if he is accused of an offence.
Mahzeb said the family had taken its case from Quetta to Karachi and Islamabad, approaching the Balochistan High Court, Sindh High Court and Islamabad High Court, as well as commissions dealing with missing persons.
“We knocked on every door in search of justice,” she said, adding that none of those efforts had resulted in information about Rashid Hussain’s condition, whereabouts or legal status.
‘Seeking justice made a crime’
Mahzeb said the family’s suffering had not been limited to her uncle’s disappearance, alleging that several family members had faced harassment and enforced disappearance during the campaign for his recovery.
She said she and her father had been placed on the Fourth Schedule, while her father had also been subjected to enforced disappearance. Several other members of the family had faced similar treatment, she added.
“It appears that merely seeking justice has been made a crime for us,” Mahzeb said.
She also questioned repeated calls by the state for affected families to seek redress through constitutional and legal channels when, she said, those institutions had failed to provide answers for years.
“If a family receives no justice for eight years, then where is justice? Where is the law? And for whom does the Constitution exist?”
Mahzeb appealed to civil society, human rights organisations, lawyers, journalists and others concerned with justice to raise their voices for the recovery of Rashid Hussain and all other missing persons.
“When a person disappears, it is not only one individual who is taken away; an entire family is imprisoned in a state of waiting,” she said.