Daily Times Editorial Jan 7, 2010

Missing persons conundrum

A three-member bench of the Supreme Court (SC) is once again seized of the issue of missing persons. The case has been dragging on since the last two or three years, with no end in sight. This despite the prime minister’s assurance from the floor of the National Assembly (NA) that as part of the government’s efforts to reconcile estranged Balochistan, the missing persons would start returning to their homes. Despite the chief executive’s direction, no more than five people out of thousands missing have returned home, according to Human Rights Commission of Pakistan chairperson Asma Jahangir. If the issue were not so serious, this would make one laugh uncontrollably. The Balochistan reconciliation effort does not have a snowball’s chance in hell until and unless the missing persons are recovered, and new abductions of nationalist activists stopped. The SC was not wide of the mark when it said that it was issues like the missing persons that posed a greater threat to democracy than any court verdict, including the NRO judgement. The bench asked parliament to legislate in order to play its role in resolving the missing persons conundrum.
Since the case has dragged on for years without any result, the court has decided to hold daily hearings after the Attorney General (AG) reports back from consultations with the relevant ministries and intelligence agencies on the issue within two weeks. The SC has also asked the AG to inform the prime minister regarding details of the missing persons, presumably to remind him of his pledge in the NA. It also asked the government to provide financial relief to the families of those missing.
While the court was well intentioned in its stated resolve not to stop at summoning lowly officials to answer questions about specific cases of missing persons, Justice Javed Iqbal, heading the bench, wryly remarked in answer to a counsel’s plea to summon the heads of Military Intelligence and the ISI that the last time the court attempted to do this, the judges were sent home for 16 months. This is merely a reflection of an obvious truth that our intelligence agencies are used to a culture of impunity that has grown over the country’s history because of repeated military interventions in politics and authoritarian trends even when civilian governments have been in power. The intelligence and security agencies appear to be a law unto themselves and until the SC came along to ask awkward questions, never felt under any pressure for being in violation of the law, constitution, and the rights of citizens. The law states that no person can be kept in custody unless he has been produced before a magistrate within 24 hours of his arrest. This law is practised more in the breach by the intelligence and security agencies, and at a more ordinary everyday level, even by the police. It is terra incognita for both the intelligence and security agencies as well as the court to now try and reverse this culture of impunity that fundamentally characterises our security and law enforcement milieu.
The SC has been under attack in recent days for its impugned straying into areas that are the purview of parliament or the executive. Whether those arguments hold weight or not, in the missing persons case, the court is on solid ground in questioning a whole regime of blatant violation of the laws of the land and citizens’ rights. The fact that abductions (sometimes in broad daylight and irrespective of witnesses) are still continuing can only cause concern across the board while fuelling further the anger and resentment already near boiling point in Balochistan, the most affected province because of the highhandedness of the intelligence and security agencies.