Baloch youths, especially the students and educated class, have been the direct victims of enforced disappearances for the last few days in particular. Only in the month of August (2023), more than 20 Baloch students have gone missing from across Balochistan including from Kech, Gwadar, Khuzdar, Kharan and Quetta. Unfortunately, most of the students, this time, have been of matriculation and intermediate, and those who have been solely prioritizing education and nothing else. Neither they are imprisoned in a local police station nor are they ever produced in a court of law. After a few days– sometimes months and years– they are released after mental and physical torture. And then no one ever asks them officially where they were or who inflicted torture on them. Should not it be deemed that the state is equally a partner with the heinous criminals?
Following the surge in enforced disappearances of the Baloch students, many families have restrained their children from an education away from their home cities. While many cities in Balochistan are deprived of the basics of life, education is still only available far away. But the question is yet another: cannot Baloch choose to get an education anywhere in the country? If so, why are they made to disappear on the basis of their nationality? If not, why is such an amendment not introduced in the Constitution, making Baloch an exception to all the fundamental human rights mentioned from Articles 9 to 28 of the Constitution?
Earlier, the Enforced Dissappearance (ED) cases only appeared in Balochistan. But this latest wave of illegal ‘abductions’ by the ‘legal institutions’ have spread across the country. Only in the year of 2022, over 60 Baloch, including students from the Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad and the University of Punjab Lahore, were made to disappear in broad daylight. Some cases were even recorded in camera but neither courts nor any other state institutions have been ready to make the persons and institutions behind the enforced disappearances of the Baloch accountable. With such a one-sided attitude, won’t the Baloch alienation further spread making it harder for state institutions to enter into peaceful dialogues with the Baloch?
On the other hand, the new ‘caretakeer project’ of the ministries is handed over to ‘Balochistan’s Anwaar Ul-Haq Kakar’ saying that it would help in resolving the Baloch issue. The fact is that Kakar has been even a bigger anti-Baloch ‘project’ launched to counter the Baloch as a nation. From the day he took oath as the caretaker prime minister, the enforced disappearances in Balochistan have intensified, taking in more Baloch students. He has already been notorious in the region for his formation of the ‘Voice of Balochistan’ NGO and his role in the suddenly-established Balochistan Awami Party (BAP). In fact, as journalist mentions in a column in a newspaper, Kakar has been purely a pro-establishment figure who has always resisted highlighting the cases of enforced disappearances. “In a seminar at Quetta in 2017, he (Kakar) made comments on my talk at one of the sessions: why do you only talk about missing persons?”
Enforced disappearance is recognized by the United Nations as a crime against humanity and international law. It refers to confining a person, or persons, illegally from any sort of movement and infringing their other subordinated rights, including that of legal representation in a court of law.
Apart from Kakar, the other political parties, too, have used the enforced disappearances as a tool to gain votes. The fresher rise in EDs can be an election campaign to ‘blackmail’ the parents into casting their votes even against their wills. Because the parties grab such opportunities and ask the affected families to render them their votes, and in return they vow to talk to the ‘authorities’ and ensure their loved ones are released. Because as the general elections get closer, we can witness the number of enforced disappearances ascending so fast. The authorities perhaps fear an election boycott because of the absence of a positive role of the parliamentarians in the lives of the people in Balochistan.
Whatever the case may be, Baloch students are at the forefront in confronting the state oppression. Whether involved in anti-state activity or not, they are to face the tortures and illegal detentions, which will not only weaken them physically but traumatize them mentally as well even after they are released. When justice itself goes missing despite the presence of the administration of justice (the courts), how come the people, living under such a fragile justice system, overcome going abducted illegally?
Enforced disappearance is recognized by the United Nations as a crime against humanity and international law. It refers to confining a person, or persons, illegally from any sort of movement and infringing their other subordinated rights, including that of legal representation in a court of law. Baloch have been facing EDs for years, with a growing ration from 2009 which turned into the kill and dump policy back then. With a short break in the middle, the EDs have once again arisen from the Baloch regions, including Karachi and Dera Ghazi Khan, to other cities like Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore. The state needs to revive its policy of enforced disappearances of the Baloch if they pretend to be serious with the Baloch issue.
