Posters outside UN highlight issue of enforced disappearances in Pakistan

Updated:7 years, 1 month ago

Geneva (Switzerland), Sep 12 (ANI): The European Organisation for Pakistani Minorities, an NGO, has put up banners in front of the United Nations office in Geneva to highlight the grim issue of enforced disappearances in Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). It is during the ongoing 39th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. As per the NGO, a large number of people, mostly political activists and intellectuals, from Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Pakistan occupied Kashmir have been forcefully abducted by the Pakistan Army and intelligence agencies. Many of these activists have been falsely booked under the Anti-Terrorism Act. Some of the prominent activists who are missing include Nawaz Atta Baloch (Secretary of Baloch Human Rights Organisation), Sagheer Baloch (student activist), Rafaqat Ali Jarar (journalist), Zahid Baloch (Former chairman of Baloch Student Organisation –Azad), Iftikhar Kanbalai (Human Rights Activist) and Baba Jan (Human Rights Activist from Gilgit Baltistan). The NGO seeks the help of the UN to send a fact-finding team to Pakistan and help to release the victims of enforced disappearances, who are allegedly lodged in secret detention centers. Hoardings have also been put up across Geneva city to highlight the persecution of Christian minority in Pakistan. There are numerous cases of enforced disappearances which are not reported. In many cases, the victim’s mutilated body found in an isolated place.