Shia leaders flay govt inaction to recover illegally detained persons

Showing grave concerns over the recent ‘enforced disappearance’ of a Shia leader last month, leaders of various Shia organisations on Friday said hundreds of persons belonging to their sect were missing after being picked up and taken to undisclosed locations, but the government had refused to take any responsibility.

The Imamia Organisation Pakistan (IOP), a prominent Shia group, organised a press conference at the Karachi Press Club, urging the authorities to show the whereabouts of Shia missing persons, including Syed Raziul Abbas Shamsi. a religious scholar and the IOP’s central head.

Shaikh Salahuddin Hasan, Allama Baqir Abbas Zaidi, Allama Sadiq Jaffery and Hussain Abbas Advocate were key speakers. Speakers said 70-year-old Shamsi was a prominent social activist and involved in welfare activities in the country’s remote areas.

They said doctors, engineers and other intellectuals of the community had been targeted in sectarian killings in the recent past, and now law-enforcement agencies were arresting and detaining people belonging to the community.

They said that through a ‘Fill the Jail Movement’ involving peaceful protests and registering concerns at every forum, the community had been demanding of the government to ascertain the whereabouts of the detained people but all in vain.

“The government’s silence on the disappearances is like rubbing salt into the wound,” Hasan said, adding that bread-earners of Shia families were taken into illegal and undeclared custody without any charge against them.

Demanding the safe recovery of the missing persons, he said that if any of them had been involved in any unlawful activity, they should be brought to court. “We are demanding our right through a peaceful struggle.”

Speakers requested Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Saqib Nisar and Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa to play their due role in the recovery of detained persons.