ISLAMABAD: Senator Farhatullah Babar on Tuesday proposed that the recovered missing persons be allowed to take the Senate committee in confidence.
Speaking during the hour of issues of public importance in the Senate, he said that journalist Zeenat Shazadi and rights activist Punhal Sario had been freed from captivity last week, but they were too scared to talk about their ordeal. “This is the responsibility of the state to re-assure these hapless people,” he said. He proposed that the human rights committee invite some of them to record their statements in camera. Further, the committee members should make a declaration on oath that they would not divulge their statements in public, he said. He said that apart from its cathartic value for the victims it would also add to the body of information available to the Parliament which might be highly useful in discreetly addressing the increasing incidents of missing persons. Secondly, he said, while the efforts of the Commission on Enforced Disappearances had resulted in the tracing of a large number of missing persons, it had failed in performing two important functions. “It failed in fixing responsibility on individuals or organisations responsible for enforced disappearance as well as in registering FIR’s against them,” he said. The senator proposed that after six years, it was time to disband it and replace it with a new commission with experts in investigations. “It should make public its reports as provided in the new amended law on inquiry commissions,” he said. He also called for making public the report of the first 2010 commission which worked for only one year. On the issue of accountability, he said that the Parliament had a unique opportunity to remove the glaring anomalies in the existing NAB law that was misused for political re-engineering. He called for seizing the moment and devising new legislation for across the board accountability of all.
Published in Daily Times, October 25th 2017.
