Good step forward

With the past few days having been rocky with protests, sit-ins, terrible optics of unnecessary arrests, the government seems to have figured out the right way to take the next step forward. In this, the government has announced a support package worth Rs5 million to each family of missing persons, stepping up efforts to provide legal and financial assistance to them. The missing persons issue – a challenge every government has failed to resolve – is perhaps the country’s most sustained human rights question. Federal Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar has said that two reports about the missing persons issue were presented before the cabinet, adding that the cabinet also approved the constitution of a special committee to examine genuine cases of families in need of support after reviewing the final report of the committees. The new committee will address the problems being faced by the missing persons’ families. It is important to remember – and remind – that the assistance announced is not remuneration but an attempt by the government to share the grief of the missing persons’ families and resolve their problems.

The government’s announcement came as the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) activists demanding the recovery of missing persons called off their sit-in in Gwadar this week after successful negotiations with the local administration. The government claims that only 23 per cent of missing persons’ cases are pending. As per the official numbers,10,200 cases of missing persons were registered in the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (COIED), out of which around 8,000 cases have been addressed. However, families of missing persons say the numbers are much higher and most of their cases have not been resolved.

It is probably obvious but for the families, the most important issue is of course the recovery of missing persons, without which no package would work. However, this step is a positive development because it is an official acknowledgement by the government for the first time that these families – who were in the past labelled as foreign agents – are indeed Pakistani citizens who have genuine grievances. This is a big development given how the state has previously dismissed the claims of these families. This support package may serve as a much-needed band aid to stop the bleeding, but the real issue at the end of the day is the cuts these families have been nursing for years on end. These cuts need to stop. There is a genuine need of assistance because there have been many cases where the sole bread earner has been picked up while his family has been left with nothing. There are also legal issues like when children whose fathers went missing when they were young are now old enough to have their CNICs made but NADRA does not have their father’s data or they have to take admissions or get medical help but there is no documentation regarding their fathers. For this, the government has rightly offered legal and financial assistance as many families of missing persons have a very difficult time managing their day-to-day lives. But as has been pointed out time and again, these families don’t just need compensation – they need closure. If a missing person has committed a crime, he must be presented before the courts so the law can take its course but the families need to know whether their loved ones are alive or not. At the end of the day, support packages will only work if justice is served with them.