‘We don’t even know if we’re orphans or not’: For the families of the ‘disappeared’, there is only uncertainty and agony
“If our people have committed any sort of crime against the state, then by all means, try them in a court of law. Don’t kidnap them and leave the families wondering if their loved ones are dead or alive,” said Sammi Deen Baloch, her voice quivering with emotion.
She was one of the 100 or so protesters — including children — who had gathered outside Karachi’s Frere Hall yesterday to mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, a day that recognises and amplifies the concerns of those whose loved ones have disappeared. They then marched to the Karachi Press Club (KPC), where activists and family members delivered speeches describing the cruelty of enforced disappearances.
Even though the UN has designated this one day to highlight the pain of the loved ones, the agony of Sammi, and others like her, is year-round.
She was at the tender age of 10 when her father went missing. Now 24, she joins countless others at protests seeking the well-being — or closure — of their missing family members. Protesters like Sammi have marched from Quetta to Islamabad to demand answers, petitioned the courts, sat on highways and staged rallies, only to be faced with apathy.
For these families, navigating the legal and political labyrinth in the country in search of their loved ones is like walking through a revolving door: they end up exactly where they started, leaving without what they came for in the first place. But unlike the rotation of the revolving door, which has some semblance of movement, these families are paralysed, stuck in the moment their loved ones were taken away.
For them, death is not the worst tragedy to befall their families. Living this painful reality is.
‘Families destroyed’
Remembrance. Hopelessness. Anguish. These were the common words that the family members of those who are missing frequently uttered as they pondered over the fate of their loved ones. But there was one overarching question that was central to their wretched existence: “Where are our loved ones?”
“We are not asking for big projects or schemes in Balochistan, nor are we sitting here striking against inflation,” Sammi said. “All we are asking for is the fate of our loved ones.”
Sammi has been tirelessly campaigning for the return of her father Dr Deen Muhammad Baloch since he went missing on 28 June, 2009.
Five-year-old Meroz joined her mother and older sister Saeeda Baloch at the rally, holding up a poster of her missing father. Sharing the fate of Sammi and several other young women, Meroz has mostly known a life without her father, Abdul Hameed Zehri. According to a poster they were holding, he went missing on April 10, 2021.
Like Sammi, Saeeda has forged on in her efforts to find answers on the whereabouts of her father.
“When you kidnap one person you end up destroying their whole family. We don’t even know yet if we’ve been orphaned or not,” Saeeda told Dawn.com.
“My mother has lost all her health waiting for my father to come back. She’s been both a mother and father to us in the last couple of years trying to raise us,” Saeeda said, sharing praise for the women who have desperately tried to carry on with their lives with a burden they should not have to carry any longer.
“This (enforced disappearances) isn’t just an issue for these family members. It is an issue for the whole nation,” said Qazi Khizar Habib, vice chairperson of the Sindh chapter of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).
The HRCP had organised the event at Frere Hall and later at Karachi Press Club (KPC) in conjunction with other human rights groups.
Activists who attended the rally sat in solidarity with family members at the steps of Frere Hall, where they had laid out posters, personal belongings and even school certificates of young children who had been kidnapped recently.
‘We have no happiness anymore’
“All of us are dead when you kidnap one person. We have no happiness anymore,” said Mazib Baloch.
Fauzia Baloch, whose brother Daadshah Baloch went missing on August 11 this year, echoed a similar sentiment: “Don’t punish us just for being Baloch.”
She said that in previous rallies, it was mostly Baloch families protesting the enforced disappearances of their loved ones, but they are now joined by Sindhi and Pakhtun families too.
Over the past 20 days, Fauzia along with other families protested at various places, most recently at Mauripur Road, where the police forcibly dispersed them.
“If we demand justice, who do we demand it from? When we go to the police they don’t do so much as file an FIR for us. When we go to court, they don’t tell us where our loved ones are or where they’ve been taken,” she lamented.
Till today, Pakistan has not acceded to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (CED), according to a 2022 report from Amnesty International, which means that enforced disappearances are not currently criminalised in Pakistan.
At present, approximately 8,700 cases of missing people have been registered with the Committee of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, created in 2011.
But a report by the International Court of Jurists said that the committee has “done nothing to advance access to justice and remedy and reparation for the family of the victims, or to hold accountable perpetrators of the crime of enforced disappearance”.
Activists and lawyers within Pakistan have long criticised the state’s response, or lack thereof, to the missing people endemic plaguing the country.
Just last year, the Islamabad High Court acknowledged the committee’s lack of effectiveness, headed by retired Justice Javed Iqbal. That same year the National Assembly passed a bill criminalising enforced disappearances. But while committees have been made and shortcomings acknowledged, families of the victims of enforced disappearances are still waiting for answers.
‘Lies and false hopes’
Speaking to Dawn.com, Sammi Deen Baloch joined Fauzia and Mazib in their stance.
“The state has made it clear to us time and time again that we are not citizens of this country, that we do not have equal rights.”
Sammi has met with several governments and ministers and knocked on all the doors she could have, she explained, only for her pleas to fall on deaf ears.
Now, all she wants to know is the well-being of her father.
“What crime have us sisters and mothers and daughters committed to be put through such mental anguish day in and day out?” Sammi asked.
Renowned artist and activist Sheema Kermani expressed her solidarity with the victims, most of whom are women and children.
“I know so many of these women who have been waiting for years for their husbands and brothers, and I share their pain,” Keermani told Dawn.com.
She recited original poetry highlighting the enforced disappearances, explaining how she fuses together her art and activism to draw awareness to political issues through various mediums of art.
“I hang my head in shame that as a fellow citizen of this country, I cannot do anything except join in their voice of protest.”
Header photo: Protesters gather outside Karachi’s Frere Hall on August 30, to mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.— Photo by author
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