Dawn.com Herald Exclusive | March 18, 2011 | Original story

by Maqbool Ahmed

The democratically elected representatives of the province have also failed to raise the issue, let alone address it. None of the 65 members of Balochistan Assembly during the last two years has moved a resolution to discuss the disappearances and extrajudicial killings. That 64 of these members are part of the provincial government and yet they have not taken up the issue even once means they are either helpless or unwilling to do something about it.

Abdul Qayyum Baloch

The atmosphere in the room is pensive instead of being mournful. About half a dozen men are sitting in a semi circle. Every 10 to 15 minutes a few of them leave and some others join. When a new group arrives, all the men, including the newcomers, raise their hands to pray. Gathered inside a typical Baloch house where Nazar Mohammad lives along with his joint family, they are praying for the departed soul of his son Abdul Qayyoom, who was found dead in the hills of Ketch district on February 11, 2011.

Qayyoom had gone missing from a friend's house in his hometown Gwadar on December 13, 2010. At around 3:00 pm that day, two dozen personnel of the Frontier Corps (FC) arrived in three vans and laid siege to the house he was at. Asking those inside to keep quiet, the officials locked the women in a separate room. Soon afterward, a few men in civilian clothes arrived in vehicles with tinted glasses. They dragged Qayyoom out of the house and dumped him in one of the vehicles. His neighbours and relatives who tried to resist were tortured. Later the FC had a case registered against all of them for rioting.

After extensive efforts, Qayyoom's relatives managed to get a kidnapping case registered against the FC. The family also informed the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), senior police officials and a member of the provincial assembly from Gwadar about his kidnapping. But they all failed to trace him.

On February 10 this year, at about 2:00 am, villagers in Heronk area in Turbat subdivision of Ketch district were woken from their sleep by the sound of gunfire in the nearby hills. Three months ago they had heard similar sounds during the night and the next day they had discovered two corpses from the hills. This time, too, they found two bodies when they searched the hills next day. A group of local men travelled several miles on foot to Gwadar-Rato Dero Highway and asked a truck driver to inform the administration in Turbat about the bodies they had found. When the subdivision's magistrate received the bodies, they were identified as Qayyoom and another man called Jameel Yaqoob, a member of the National Party's organising committee in Turbat. He had disappeared on January 10, 2011.

Such dumping and discovery of bodies since last year has opened a new chapter in the conflict between Baloch nationalists and the state. Political activists who disappeared in the previous years have never resurfaced even as dead. But 82 Baloch men, mostly young students, have been found dead after their forced disappearance since April 2010, according to the statistics collected by the HRCP's Balochistan chapter. The Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, an advocacy group, puts the figure at 110. At least nine bodies on the HRCP list were so mutilated that they could not be identified. Only from their dress could it be gauged that the dead were Baloch.

These numbers could be even higher. "Relatives of a number of young Baloch kidnapped and killed in Kohlu and Dera Bugti districts did not inform the media or human rights groups," Nasrullah Baloch, chairman of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, tells the Herald. "When we receive information about the bodies being found there and ask the local people to provide details, they refuse, saying that they do not want more trouble for the families of the dead."

It may not be possible to provide incriminating evidence in every case that the FC and the intelligence agencies are involved in what appears to be extrajudicial killings at a large scale. But the circumstantial evidence in each of them points in only one direction "” security and intelligence agencies. When political rebels or religious militants kill someone they usually do accept responsibility for that. A show of strength is meaningless for them unless they can also boast about it. The other important factor is that all the people found dead had disappeared, sometimes for months, before they died. The disappearances, the local people believe, bear the unmistakable mark of the agencies operating in Balochistan. The only new thing about the phenomenon is that many of those disappeared are now coming back "” dead.

The unwillingness of the province's police and judicial system to investigate and prosecute these cases only deepens the mystery surrounding them. When Abdul Hameed, vice-chairman of the Balochistan Bar Council, filed a habeas corpus petition in the Balochistan High Court on behalf of Jameel Yaqoob's brother, the government lawyer filed a reply saying that the police did not know about the missing man. "Agencies' personnel, with the help of the FC, kidnap young Baloch in the presence of their relatives and dozens of neighbours but the police plainly refuse to register cases when complainants name the security force or intelligence agency or their officials as being responsible for disappearances or murders," Hameed tells the Herald. When the cases reach courts, "the judges usually do not tell the concerned government departments to submit even their comments," he says. Forget about the courts "summoning the heads of intelligence agencies who are directly responsible for disappearances," he adds. To the further discredit of the police and the judicial system, "even when a missing person, whose relatives have filed a habeas corpus petition, is found dead, the courts never order an inquiry. They, instead, dismiss the petition as being infructuous."

Hameed says that all of this is despite the fact that Article 10 of the Constitution provides safeguards against arbitrary arrests and undeclared detentions. "The arresting agency is bound to produce the detained person before a court of competent jurisdiction and disclose charges against him or her," he explains. Even in cases where a person is suspected to be working against the state, the arrest cannot be hidden from the court under the pretext of preventive detention. "Every type of arrest and detention has been clearly mentioned in various clauses of Article 10. But our security and intelligence agencies show no respect for such laws," he says.

The case of Qamber Chaker is a stark reminder about how the criminal justice system in Balochistan fails to address the problem of missing persons. A masters student at the Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences, Chaker was picked up by the FC from his hometown Tump, near Turbat, on November 26, 2010 along with his cousin Irshad Nasir. In spite of the fact that his detention photos and videos were splashed in the media, the police refused to register a case of illegal confinement against the FC or intelligence agencies.

The Balochistan Students Organisation-Azad (BSO-Azad) claims Chaker to be a member of its central committee. He had been arrested earlier in a similar fashion in July 2009 from Quetta. He was released after about ten months without being charged. His family blamed security forces for brutally torturing him during confinement. Second time they were unluckier to receive him dead. His body was found on January 5, 2011 in Pedarak area in Pasni subdivision along the Makran Coastal Highway. According to his uncle, four bullet wounds were visible on his chest while one bullet had hit his forehead. His right arm appeared to be dislocated at the shoulder and the wrist.

At the same place where Chaker's body was dumped, another young man Ilyas Nazar was also found dead. He had just completed his masters in computer science and was returning from Quetta on December 22, 2010 after receiving his degree certificate when the bus he was travelling was stopped and stormed by intelligence personnel in Badok locality near Pasni. Passengers later told Nazar's family that the intelligence men whisked him away after checking his national identity card. Though BSO-Azad claimed him as a member, his friends in Turbat tell the Herald that he had not been taking part in any political activities for more than a year. The whereabouts of Chaker's cousin Nasir are still unknown.

But it is not young men alone who are being targeted. "Though most of the people being abducted and murdered by the security and intelligence agencies are young Baloch men aged between 22 and 28, in some cases boys in their teens and old men above 50 have also been kidnapped and killed," says Nasrullah Baloch.

Naseer Kamalan, 56, and Majeed Baloch, just 14, are among those kidnapped and killed in these categories. A leader of the Baloch National Movement, political arm of the insurgency, Kamalan was picked up on November 5, 2010 on his way back to Pasni from Gwadar. People who witnessed the event say that the FC men, having arrived in official vehicles, checked the national identity cards of the passengers of two vans and singled out Kamalan for detention. His family joined a hunger strike by the relatives of other missing Baloch in Quetta to press for his release. His body was eventually found dumped along the Makran Coastal Highway. Besides being a veteran political worker, Kamalan was also a known poet. Majeed Baloch was abducted from a shop near Umar Farooq Chowk in Khuzdar on October 18, 2010. According to his family, he had gone with his friends to buy groceries when intelligence personnel, backed by the FC, took him away. His badly tortured body was found six days later from Rabia Khuzdari Road in Khuzdar city.

Nor are these incidents limited to the southern parts of the province. Shahjehan Lango went to a park in Quetta along with his friends on June 11, 2010 when, according to his family and friends, he was whisked away by the FC and the agencies personnel. Two months later his body was found dumped along Sabzal Road in Quetta. On April 5, 2010, Najeebullah Lango was on his way to Mangochar in Kalat district from Quetta along with two friends when they were intercepted and picked up. His family says intelligence agencies told them to remain quiet about the incident and ensured them that the three men would be released after interrogation. Though his friends were set free two months later, Lango's body was found dumped in a park in Satellite Town in Quetta on July 23, 2010.

"These kidnappings and killings are further eroding any trust the Baloch are left with in the state," says Senator Abdul Malik Baloch, National Party president. "Frustration grows among the Baloch when they see courts taking suo moto actions against mob lynching in Punjab but ignoring the dumping of the bodies of Baloch youth who are kidnapped by security agencies in the presence of many witnesses," he tells the Herald.

When asked if the provincial government has initiated any probe into the kidnappings and the dumping of corpses, Ahmed Bakhsh Lehri, Balochistan chief secretary, says investigation teams are routinely constituted to look into these cases. But "such investigations have so far failed to find any clue as to who is behind these incidents." And as far as the role of the FC in the province is concerned, Lerhi says the purpose of its presence in Balochistan is to assist the provincial government in maintaining law and order but "due to having worked under undemocratic governments, it has developed a habit of going out of its ambit." Nor, he says, has the FC been placed under the administrative control of the Blaochistan chief minister even though the parliament had pledged to make this change as part of the Aghaz-e-Haqooq-e-Balochistan package (see Unfulfilled Promises).

The democratically elected representatives of the province have also failed to raise the issue, let alone address it. None of the 65 members of Balochistan Assembly during the last two years has moved a resolution to discuss the disappearances and extrajudicial killings. That 64 of these members are part of the provincial government and yet they have not taken up the issue even once means they are either helpless or unwilling to do something about it. In keeping with this trend, no provincial minister - or for that matter any political representative of the federal government - was ready to talk to the Herald about the extrajudicial killings and the dumping of bodies. Lashkari Raisani, the younger brother of Balochistan Chief Minister Aslam Raisani and a senator of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, initially agreed to talk but later he stopped responding to phone calls and text messages. His personal assistant was not able to get replies from him either. Balochistan Home Minister Zafar Zehri also refused to talk, saying he was preoccupied with other important matters.

People, however, clearly know who is responsible for the extrajudicial killings. "I do blame the FC and intelligence agencies for killing my nephew," says Qayyoom's uncle Abdur Rasool. "But I also hold Baloch legislators sitting in the National Assembly, Senate and the provincial assembly even more responsible not only for his murder but also for those of hundreds of Baloch youth who are being slaughtered like goats," he tells the Herald. "Do they still believe that we can get our rights through parliamentary means? Mark my words, that will never happen and they will be treated as traitors by coming generations of the Baloch," he warns. His ominous words are sure to find many more echoes in the hills and deserts of Balochistan if bodies of the missing Baloch men continue to litter the province's parched landscape.