Aimal wants truth and reconciliation commission formed to rectify past mistakes

ISLAMABAD: Awami National Party (ANP) President Senator Aimal Wali Khan, speaking in the upper house of the parliament on Wednesday, called for forming a truth and reconciliation commission to accept and rectify mistakes of the past with the pledge that the same would not be repeated.

Speaking on the floor of the House, he regretted, “It is our bad luck that one army general comes to form the Taliban and the other comes to eliminate them, urging for some way out to compensate for the losses of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) in terrorism incidents.

He proposed that the whole country should form a united narrative to curb terrorism, claiming KP had intentionally been made once again a heap of gunpowder.

JUIF Senator Kamran Murtaza, who wanted to speak before the question hour, was given the floor after it and he was on his feet to raise the issue of missing persons in Balochistan, pointing out that the problem of enforced disappearances had intensified in the province for the past few weeks. He noted that the forces and agencies faced the blame for the illegal acts.

He maintained that in retaliation, Balochistan’s main highways had remained blocked for the last many days by the protestors, disconnecting the province with the entire country, eroding the writ of the government in many parts of the province.

Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said the commission on missing persons had been reconstituted and a hardworking retired judge of Supreme Court had been made its head. He said a support package of Rs5 million each had been given to families of those missing persons whose cases remained unresolved.

He assured the House that he would convey these concerns to the interior minister, while a policy had been adopted over the issue. He added that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had formed a cabinet committee over the issue and the matter would be resolved within the legal framework.

Later, referring to the speech by JUIF Senator Kamran Murtaza, Jan Muhammad Buledi of the National Party endorsed his concerns and said that all the highways in Balochistan were shut, as children of people had been picked up and made missing. He pointed out that the political space in the province was shrinking every day.