US: WSC organises event to hight enforced disappearances in Pakistan

To highlight the issue of enforced disappearances in Sindh, Balochistan and other parts of Pakistan by the state agencies, World Sindhi Congress (WSC) organised an event in New York on International day for enforced disappearances.

Raja Dahir Joyo of the WSC organised the program on Friday, which was attended by the organisation's vice-chairmen Farhan Soomro, Human Rights activist Sabah Ismail Pashtun, journalist Hassan Mujtaba and poet Riaz Samoon.

"The issue of enforced disappearance is very prominent in Pakistan. My family was attacked in 2014 with armed people and they asked us to stop helping people. We did not stop working and shifted to Islamabad," said Sabah.

"My sister was also disappeared for 40 hours. She was raising voice against atrocities on women by the army. She was the part of a protest against the murder of a professor Arman Loni. She had no idea about her whereabouts, only after the international pressure they released her," she added.

Human rights activists from various organisations have been continuing their campaigns around the world to highlight the worsening human rights situation in Pakistan.

For long, Pakistan's establishment has been criticised over its practice of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings by international bodies and local human rights organisations that dare to speak out on the issue.

According to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, an entity established by the Pakistani government, about 5,000 cases of enforced disappearances have been registered since 2014. Most of them are still unresolved.

Independent local and international human rights organisations put the numbers much higher. Around 20,000 have reportedly been abducted only from Balochistan, out of which more than 2,500 have turned up dead as bullet-riddled dead bodies, bearing signs of extreme torture.

Before being elected as Prime Minister, Imran Khan had admitted in multiple interviews about the involvement of Pakistan's intelligence agencies in enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings and vowed to resign if he was unable to put an end to the practice, holding those involved responsible.