Civil society members, who initiated a 750km long march from Turbat to Quetta against "enforced disappearance of Baloch and missing persons", had on Monday covered a distance of 50 kilometre.
They are also demanding an end to drug trafficking in Balochistan and the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, under which the federal institutions forcefully take possession of the provincial lands.
The march, which has been labeled as a barefoot one, led by the society's convener Gulzar Dost left from Turbat on Sunday morning through China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) road and they claim it as the second longest march of Balochistan.
In 2013, members of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, led by Mama Qadeer Baloch, undertook a long march from Quetta to Karachi and then to Islamabad. After covering a distance of at least 3,000km in more than two months, the activists met representatives of the United Nations, the European Union and a few countries in the federal capital and discussed the issue of "enforced disappearance", according to a The Balochistan Post report.
Ahead of the long march, Dost was quoted in the report as saying he didn't see an end to "enforced disappearance" in the province in the foreseeable future. The participants of march noted that "thousands of Balochs have gone missing over the years and the grim practice continues unabated".
In related news, Baloch Students Council staged a protest on February 13, in front of Islamabad Press Club against the enforced disappearance of Abdul Hafeez and other Baloch young men who had been killed.
Currently, a hashtag to release Dileep Baloch continues to trend. "Dileep, a student of MA English Literature in IUB, has been abducted by Frontier Corps in Rakni Check Post Barkhan," a political worker, Mahrang Baloch, tweeted.
A large number of cases were pending before the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, which is investigating the missing persons cases.
A case of missing bloggers and journalists was ongoing in the Islamabad High Court where Mudassar Naru, a missing person since 2018, was being discussed. His four-year-old son Sachal regularly appeared before the IHC along with his grandmother to attend hearings. In the recent hearing of the case, the high court ordered the commission to submit a report before the next hearing.
Earlier, the court had granted time to the commission for effective investigation in the missing persons case and directed it to present final arguments.
Besides, IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah had remarked that persons involved in enforced disappearances could not do it on their own without the consent of the federal government.
The commission is headed by Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal, who is also chairperson of the National Accountability Bureau.
In December 2021, the commission issued its progress report for the month of November and claimed that it had disposed of 6,047 cases during the month of November, reported The News.
The commission received 8,279 cases of alleged enforced disappearance from March 2011 to November 30, 2021 across the country, read the report.
Aaj News' Turbat Correspondent Lal Bux contributed to the reporting of this story.
