Relatives of missing persons stage protest in Pakistan's Peshawar

The relatives of missing persons from a tribal district in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province staged a protest outside the Peshawar Press Club on Monday, seeking safe and early recovery of their dear ones.

The protesters from Mohmand tribal district were carrying banners and placards inscribed with slogans, The News International reported. The speakers at the demonstration said they had been requesting the Pakistani authorities to end their sufferings since long but no action was taken for that.

The protesters said their relatives should be produced before the court of law and awarded punishment if they were found guilty instead of making them disappear. The speakers at the protest asked the Pakistani government to provide them justice and end the miseries they had been facing due to the disappearance of their loved ones.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), the country witnessed substantial human rights violations in 2020, from forced conversions of religious minorities and crimes against women to enforced disappearances and curbs on freedom of expression.

On the issue of enforced disappearances, the HRCP annual report said, "Since the inception of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (COIED), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has topped the list in terms of numbers of missing persons. At end-December 2020, the total number of cases registered in the province stood at 2,942."

The Sindh High Court last month had directed Pakistan's Interior Secretary to personally produce details from internment centres about missing persons and recalled an arrest warrant issued earlier against him.

The two-judge bench had issued a non-bailable warrant for the arrest of Interior Secretary Yousuf Nasim Khokhar as well as show-cause notices against him in several petitions of missing persons for consistently violating court orders by not filing information from the internment centres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa regarding missing persons, Dawn newspaper reported.

( With inputs from ANI )

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