The recent court decision on missing persons have moved Prime Minister Imran Khan to say that his government would not tolerate any missing persons in the country. His telling the Cabinet so on Tuesday came after the Islamabad High Court had passed strictures on the Prime Minister and the members of the Federal Cabinet over the matter, which has been passing from one ministry to another, and one government to the next, without any resolution. The missing persons have been a problem because, in enthusiasm for the War on Terror, many persons supporting the Taliban have gone missing, without their next of kin knowing their fate.
The government seems unable to deal with problem, perhaps because no one is willing to take responsibility, for Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting revealed that the Interior, Human Rights and Law Ministries were involved in passing responsibility from themselves to the other. So far, there was no mention of the Defence Ministry, even though one attempt to resolve the issue had involved getting legislation producing a legal framework for at least some detentions, especially for the special facilities in the tribal areas. The Supreme Court had tried to get the matter resolved, but it had not entirely succeeded.
Part of the problem seems to have been the possibility that any ‘disappeared persons’ who reappeared might make revelations embarrassing to officers belonging to certain sensitive agencies, and falling within the Defence Ministry’s purview. However, unconstitutional actions cannot be justified because they serve ‘reasons of state’. Not just the persons who have disappeared, but their families, deserve, if not the return of their loved ones, reliable knowledge of their fate. Otherwise, their families might suffer the kind of problems that are faced in such situations, with heirs not knowing whether an estate has opened up for inheritance, and women not knowing if they are widows eligible for remarriage or just unlucky wives whose husbands have been imprisoned. This is also an excessive punishment for a government to inflict on its own citizens, no matter how misguided they are, and how much that government is committed to the War on Terror.
