THANKFULLY, there are some quarters in Pakistan willing to use their authority to signal the unacceptability of forcibly disappearing people. Usually, for much of officialdom, the issue of missing people is the elephant in the room they had much rather ignore. On Friday, the Islamabad High Court took the unprecedented step of slapping a Rs10m fine on the authorities for their failure in tracing the whereabouts of Ghulam Qadir who has been missing since six years. Justice Mohsin Kayani singled out the defence and interior secretaries and the SSP and SHO of the police station concerned as the government functionaries at fault in the matter. The court thus disposed of the petition filed by Mr Qadir’s brother, but warned the authorities that if he was not recovered in a month’s time, they would face a departmental inquiry.

It has often fallen to the courts to lend an ear to the desperate families of the victims and attempt to shake the authorities out of their torpor. Former chief justice of the Supreme Court Iftikhar Chaudhry made a concerted effort to address the issue, even summoning intelligence officials for questioning — which was unheard of. However, as far as penalties go, the Rs10m fine is the most severe by far. Fines of Rs2m have been imposed twice before, also by the IHC, in July 2020 and November 2018 for the same reason on relevant government functionaries. The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances whose twofold mandate is to trace the missing and hold the perpetrators accountable has utterly failed in the latter function. Despite its considerable powers, the commission appears indifferent to the importance of its role in curbing enforced disappearances, to the anguish of the victims’ families. Its November 2020 press release noted that 6,854 cases in total had come before the commission. Of these, 4,782 cases had been disposed of by Nov 30. ‘Disposal’ here means simply that the whereabouts of the missing individuals have been determined. The entries of the 21 cases ‘disposed of’ in November are telling: they manifest no attempt to get to the bottom of why the missing person was abducted in the first place or to punish the perpetrators. Instead, there is a passive acceptance of the facts. Enforced disappearances are an egregious violation of fundamental rights to security of person and due process. Does the commission have no desire to see real justice done?

Published in Dawn, January 3rd, 2021