LAHORE: Around 100 renowned academics have signed a petition written by their colleagues showing their grave concern over enforced disappearances of people, and demanding their early recovery.

The signatories include Bapsi Sidhwa, Aysha Jalal, Tariq Rehman, Saeed Shafqat, Rasool Bakhsh Raees, Dr Muhammad Waseem, Nosheen Ali and Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy.

According to Mr Raheemul Haq of the FC College, the petition is the collective voice of the Pakistani academics working here or abroad. He said the number of the missing persons was alarmingly increasing. It was 116 just in month of February 2018, showing four persons were disappearing every day.

He said these missing persons were reported to the Commission of Inquiry for Enforced Disappearances.

The number of missing persons was even higher because not all the cases were reported to the commission. All the rights activists, including Hina Jilani and I.A. Rehman, were concerned over the increasing number of the missing persons, he said.

Mr Haq added that the movement of the academics against the enforced disappearances was moving on, expecting a large number of more teachers to sign the petition.

The petition addressed to the president, prime minister, chief justice and chief of the army staff says: “We, the undersigned, are deeply distressed by what appears to be official policy to rely upon the practice of enforced disappearance as a means of stifling dissent and narrowing the bounds of allowable speech in Pakistan. The prevalence of this practice is gauged by 1,532 pending cases with the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances at the beginning of 2018.

“As teachers and academics, we are concerned that the practice of enforced disappearance is being used to generate fear, insecurity and paranoia amongst the very people who are the creative and intellectual lifeblood of our nation. By disappearing people who raise their voices for a collective conscience, thriving cultures of critical debate are also being silenced, to the detriment of all Pakistanis”.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2018