ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) Secretary General Senator Farhatullah Babar has alleged that the government does not seem serious in enacting its own June 7 Bill to criminalise enforced disappearances.
He stated this while speaking at a webinar organized by the Defence of Human Rights and Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) on Tuesday.
Babar was of the view that from some glaring mistakes in the Bill to the fact that it is lying in the National Assembly Committee on Interior unattended for the past over 8 weeks it appears that there is no interest in it.
He said that that hopes were raised when the bill defined ‘enforced disappearance’ and also criminalised it for the first time in the country. However, it appears that some powerful quarters are still opposed to legislation even though it does the issue in a holistic manner, he added.
The PPPP leader said that law making was one thing but its implementation quite another. He said that even if the bill was enacted in its present form it will still fall far too short of achieving the objective because of the absence of any legislation to determine the mandate of intelligence agencies widely believed to be behind the enforced disappearances.
He also said that despite repeated calls by the parliament, the courts and national and international human rights bodies there is still no legislation to determine the mandate of ISI. However during hearings before superior courts the ISI claimed to have ‘lawful’ authority to arrest persons engaged in anti-state activities and this dichotomy will always be a serious impediment, he added.
Ideally there should be a separate legal mechanism to provide for filing complaints of disappearances, holding perpetrators accountable and providing for compensation to the aggrieved families, Babar said. The bill brought before the National Assembly does not provide for these essential pre-requisites, he added.
The PPPP leader said that there are internment centres not only in former tribal districts but in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province beyond the jurisdiction of provincial police and prison department where some enforcedly disappeared were found to have been kept. The case is still pending before the SC with the last hearing held in December 2019, he added.
“Ratification of the international convention for the protection of all persons against enforced disappearances should also form part of the new legal architecture,” he maintained.
Babar said that the section in the Army Act that gave powers to the army to investigate and try in military courts even civilians in some cases was another device behind disappearances. It was under this provision that human rights defender Idris Khattak remained disappeared for over eight months until his custody was finally acknowledged under pressure, he added.
The legislative mechanism must therefore also include undoing this provision in the Army Act as well as bringing the ISI under some legislation, he further said.
The PPPP leader said that sometime back the Senate endorsed a Bill to determine the mandate of ISI which needed to be enacted into law.
