UNHRC Raises Human Rights Violation Concern In Pakistan After India's Statement

India had raised concerns over serious human rights violations being perpetrated by the Pakistan government.

Representative Photo

New Delhi: Just hours after India raised serious human rights violations being perpetrated by the Pakistan government at the UNHRC, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Michelle Bachelet raised the issue of a woman named Amina Masood, whose husband had disappeared in Pakistan in July 2005.

Website of the Office of the High Commissioner while raising the issues said, on 30 July 2005, businessman Masood Janjua was travelling by bus with one of his friends, Faisal Faraz, to Peshawar in north Pakistan, from the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

Somewhere along the way, they disappeared.

Their families immediately started to search for them. Eventually, they discovered that the two men had been forcibly disappeared by forces loyal to the then President Parvez Musarraf.

Today, the families are still without information on their loved ones' whereabouts.

"Our three children were very young at the time. It would be impossible for anyone to understand what we have all gone through during these 16 years of torture and misery," said Amina, Masood's wife.

Masood was speaking at the 21st Session of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) in Geneva, Switzerland, which began on 13 September. At each session, the CED reserves a space of tribute to victims of enforced disappearances to share their testimony. Such testimonies are key for the CED to identify options to support both them and the government authorities involved.

Masood described the period of shock and anguish that she went through when her husband was disappeared. She said she was "grievous and emotionally broken." The family had to take care of the children, and her husband's business was left to deteriorate.

"It took me many months before I realised what had happened and that I needed to get up from the bed and start searching for my loved one," she said. "As I got up with extraordinary pain and determination, I started an endless, nerve-wracking battle in which I never rested."

Together with three other families of disappeared people, she started a movement, protesting in front of locations such as Parliament House, the Supreme Court, and the presidential residence.

She told the CED that in Pakistan, enforced disappearances have become a "widespread social evil" and explained that among the people disappeared are activists, human rights defenders, writers, poets, journalists, students and lawyers.

In her statement, Masood and DHR highlighted the importance that the Pakistan Government take advantage of the momentum to ratify the International Convention.

Interestingly, on Wednesday itself, the first secretary in India's permanent mission in Geneva Pawan Badhe raised the serious issues of Human Rights violations in Pakistan. Speaking on India's rights to respond to statement by Pakistan and the OIC on Kashmir, Badhe said it does not need lessons from a "failed state" like Pakistan which is the "epicentre of terrorism and worst abuser of human rights".

The impunity with which such abuses have been carried out exposes the hollowness of Pakistan’s commitment to human rights, said First Secretary Badhe.

Pakistan has failed to protect the rights of its minorities, including Sikhs, Hindus, Christians, and Ahmadiyas. Thousands of women and girls from minority communities have been subjected to abductions, forced marriages, and conversions in Pakistan and its occupied territories. Pakistan has been engaged in systematic persecution, forced conversions, targeted killings, sectarian violence, and faith-based discrimination against its ethnic and religious minorities. Incidents of violence against minority communities, including attacks on their places of worship, their cultural heritage, as well as their private property have taken place with impunity. A ‘climate of fear’ continues to drastically impact the daily lives of minorities, he had added.