Jun 23, 2016

Side-Event to the UN Human Rights Council Highlights Enforced Disappearances and Extrajudicial Executions in Pakistan


On 21 June 2016, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization joined forces with the Asian Legal Resource Centre and the Right Livelihood Award Foundation in a side-event to the 32nd Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council, at the Palais des Nations, in Geneva. Entitled “Enforced Disappearances and Extrajudicial Executions in Pakistan”, the event aimed at drawing attention to the ever-increasing practice of the Pakistani state of using arbitrary and lethal force against its citizens, in clear violation of its constitutional duty to protect its citizen’s right to life. Combining voices of prominent human rights defenders, the event reinforced that the oppressed nations in Pakistan stand together in the pursuit of their human rights. 

Moderated by Mr Baseer Naveed (Asian Legal Resource Centre), the event heard speeches from, among others, Mr Sharan Srinivas (Right Livelihood Award Foundation), Mr Hasan Mujtaba (Writer and Columnist), Mr Mehran Baloch, (Baloch representative at the UN), Mr Lakhu Luhana (Chairman of the World Sindhi Congress), Ms Bushra Khaliq (Women In Struggle for Empowerment – WISE), Mr Ghulam Sarwar Memon (World Sindhi Congress), Mr Munawar Laghari (Sindhi Foundation), Mr Dileep Ratnani (Sindh Human Rights Watch), Mr Nasim Malik (International Human Rights Committee) and Ms Javaria Younus (Asian Human Rights Commission).

Based on testimonials from Balochi, Sindhi and peoples from the Pakistani occupied Kashmiri, the single panel looked at the enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings as the methods most often used by the Pakistani regime to instil fear among its marginalized ethnic communities.  By committing heinous human rights abuses against those they are supposed to protect, Pakistani security forces systematically intimidate, punish or silence anyone who dares voicing dissenting opinions. 

The event shed a light on the many stories of people from all walks of life who are regularly arrested, tortured and then often killed and “dumped” based on their actual or suspected political opinion or activism. Speakers highlighted that, even though most of the abductions are being carried out in broad daylight and the perpetrators are thus known, the families of the disappeared usually don’t have any information on their relatives’ fate or whereabouts. Illustrating the gravity of the situation,  Mr Luhana, Chairman of the World Sindhi Congress, remembered the audience that, “after the Serbia-Bosnia conflict, the largest number of disappeared people and the largest number of extra-judicial killings where it has taken place in the world is in Pakistan”. 

Despite the gross human rights violation, some of the speakers remarked that Islamabad’s deplorable behaviour hardly gets any domestic or international attention. Against this background, the side-event brought together voices that represent the plight of the many oppressed nations in Pakistan to emphasize, at the Human Rights Council, to importance to hold Pakistan accountable to its human rights obligations. Speeches converged to the conclusion that, while state-sponsored violence remains the modus operandi of a government that has ceded significant constitutional and decision-making authority to the armed forces, Pakistan will continue to be a land of impunity and suppression of civil, political, social and cultural rights.