Pakistan Peoples Party leader Farhatullah Babar said that even laws and reports related to missing persons in Pakistan have disappeared.

Speaking in Spotlight, Babar said that the issue of enforced disappearances in Pakistan went back three or four decades. He added that since 2000, the issue had been admitted by Pervez Musharraf.

He added that the problem existed far before 2000, particularly in the former tirabl areas.

Kamran Murtaza said there are two types of disappeared people in Pakistan. The first, he said, are the ‘religious’ type who were sold for dollars.

He said that the other type were people with political ambitions in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He said that these people number around 6,000 and there is no knowledge if they are alive or dead.

Jahangir Khan Jadoon said that when a missing person is recovered, their family does not pursue the case anymore. He said that the judicial system is responsible for the problem still being around.

He said that people often said they had gone on a vacation to the northern areas after they were recovered.

Babar said that the Supreme Court had used the word ‘army’ in relation to the case of 35 people being disappeared from Malakand’s detention centre. He said that seven people had been produced, while for the rest, the court had said that ‘only the army knows where they are’.

He said that Jadoon was right in saying that the problem cannot be solved until judiciary’s orders can be implemented.

Babar added that the chairman of the commission on disappearances had been asked by a Senate committee why not a single receovered person had led to prosecution. He said that the chairman was told he should have asked for improvement in the law.

He also said that it was on the record that 153 people from the armed forces were involved in enforced disappearances.

Murtaza said that it was no wonder that bills disappeared in a country where so little sanctity was placed on human lives that 6,000 people had disappeared.

Jadoon said that there is a 10-year imprisonment for any official involved in enforced disappearance. He added that to prevent misuse of the law there is a five-year sentence for false accusations.

He said that families often claimed that no lawyer takes up their case. However, it is hard to pursue when the person fails to identify who took them.

Murtaza said that politicans and parliament were increasingly losing their relevance in the country and it could only lead to bad things for the country.

He said that the issue of missing persons was the biggest issue in Balochistan. He said that the complex knots of dissent in the province cannot be solved without solving the issue.