Caretaker PM’s remarks on ‘Baloch disappearances’ draw criticism from PPP

ISLAMABAD: President Human Rights Cell Pakistan People’s Party Farhatullah Babar has taken strong exception to the remarks by the caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar at a press conference in Lahore on New Year’s eve about the Baloch women protesting in Islamabad and said these are most insensitive, provocative and amount to deviously skirting the real issues of people of Balochistan.

“On New Year, the caretaker Prime Minister who himself hails from Balochistan, should have sought to put balm on the wounds of the people as instead he chose, as people intoxicated with reflected power and glory often do, to rub salt into the wounds of the people of the province. This is most unfortunate and condemnable,” he said in a statement on Tuesday while responding to remarks of the Caretaker Prime Minister during his press conference in Lahore.

Farhatullah Babar said the caretaker Prime Minister owes an apology to the people, particularly to the people of Balochistan and would be well advised to withdraw the same. “His thoughtless remarks will haunt him and the people of Balochistan even long after he is no longer the caretaker Prime Minister and has been consigned to the dustbin of history,” he said.

He was of the view that worse still Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar said about those who raise voices for the victims of enforced disappearances, “Advocates of terrorists in Balochistan should go and join them so that we know where they stand and how to deal with them”. “Even those who are accused of involvement in enforced disappearances have not employed such lowly and provocative language,” he said.

The President PPP’s Human Rights Cell said no one is advocating terrorists and by equating protests against disappearances with advocating terrorism the caretaker Prime Minister is either ignorant or deliberately deflects the issue. “The demand is only that those enforcedly disappeared should be produced before courts and dealt with by the law and the Constitution and no more. What is wrong with it?” he questioned.

Babar said the enforced disappearances in Balochistan and other parts of the country are a fact and a black spot in the state. “Strong voices will continue to be raised against it, no matter what threats the caretaker Prime Minister hurls at those who raise such a voice,” he said.

The President Human Rights Cell of the PPP said that those who deny the very existence of enforced disappearances and or have any doubt about who is involved in it should read the Supreme Court verdict of December 10, 2013, in the case of the disappearance of 28 inmates from Malakand internment centre. “They may also read the minutes of the August 28, 2018 meeting of the Senate Committee of Human Rights,” he said.

He said they may also like to recall the statement of ISPR on July 5, 2019, acknowledging that some missing persons indeed were in the custody of the army and also acknowledged the setting up of a “special cell on missing persons in the GHQ”. “All these are public documents known to everyone except it seems to Kakar,” he said.