DAWN EDITORIALS PLUS OPINIONS

Dated: Thursday,4 June, 2020

Composed by: M.Usman and Rabia.K
Shahbaz’s escape
Hide and seek between NAB and Shahbaz, Chances of landing him in
lockup:

THE decision of the Lahore High Court on Wednesday to grant former chief
minister Shahbaz Sharif pre-arrest bail capped the latest upheaval in NAB’s
avowed drive to punish the corrupt and the Sharif family saga. Mr Sharif
has now been asked to appear before NAB on June 9 after Tuesday’s high
drama which had reduced the official raiders looking for Mr Sharif to a role
not quite commensurate with their status or mandate. The PML-N leader
had been summoned by NAB officials in Lahore on the day. Instead, he
chose to write a letter, introducing himself as a 69-year-old man with reasons
to be wary of gatherings during the Covid-19 pandemic. The NAB premises
were risky, and on the strength of some unspecified news reports, the letter
claimed that certain personnel had contracted the virus. Having registered its
reservations, it appears that the PML-N was correct in expecting NAB teams
to launch their ‘find Shahbaz’ operation. The first and most prominent raid
was made on the old Sharif residence in Model Town, which was reportedly
followed by more searches in other places in the city. They all drew a
blank. Mr Sharif had disappeared.

Most wanted Shahbaz is Luckily safe ; giving him place of hide under
lahore city protective wings:

Not that this operation came out of the blue. Some politicians had been
predicting that Mr Sharif was on schedule to land in the NAB lockup soon
after Eid. Clearly, the PML-N was prepared for that moment when the law
came literally knocking on their leader’s door. NAB, which has been
projected by the government cheerleaders as in the mood to catch and grill
big fish, was ultimately found wanting. Government spokespersons and
sundry PTI supporters constantly swear by NAB’s autonomous and fully
empowered status. But this incident hardly painted a pretty picture of the
highly hailed accountability officials, who made such a mess of locating and
taking into custody a man whose whereabouts in the city from where he drew
power have been so meticulously documented. One explanation is that it’s
not easy to find Shahbaz Sharif or any of his family members whom the city
of Lahore has taken under its protective wings — a line which should be
officially shunned since it would be a perfect conclusion for PML-N
supporters. A better official strategy would be to blame it on human error and
the laxity of the raiders.

Showing cowardliness and not facing trial, Shahbaz tenets of party is in

danger:

It has been suggested that Mr Sharif emerged from the episode as a

fainthearted leader. But while one can argue that the principled position
would have been to face the law, no matter how tarnished NAB’s reputation,
this would go against the tenets of Mr Sharif’s own political philosophy. The
former chief minister is here to avoid arrest, perhaps to cut a deal. He avoids
and evades; it is up to the other plank of the party to decide when it is
absolutely necessary to resist and to be seen to be doing so.
Vocabulary Section:

Capped: place a limit or restriction on, covered from (prices, expenditure, or any activity): council
budgets will be capped.
Upheaval: a violent or sudden change or disruption to something: major upheavals in the
financial markets | [ MASS NOUN ] times of political upheaval.
Avowed: assert or confess openly: he avowed that he had voted Labour in every election |
Saga: a long story of heroic achievement, launching into the saga of her engagement.
Raider: A raider is a person who takes part in quick surprise attacks on an enemy.
Commensurate: corresponding in size or degree; in proportion: salary will be commensurate with
age and experience.
Wary: feeling or showing caution about possible dangers or problems: dogs which have been
mistreated often remain very wary of strangers | a wary look.
Draw a blank (Idiom): draw a blank. informal. to fail to get an answer or a result: He asked me
for my phone number and I drew a blank - I just couldn't remember it.
Out of the blue (Idiom): without warning; unexpectedly."she phoned me out of the blue.
Sundry: various items not important enough be mentioned individually: a drugstore selling
magazines, newspapers, and sundries.
Shunned: persistently avoid, ignore, or reject (someone or something) through antipathy or
caution: he shunned fashionable society | [ as ADJ. ] ( shunned ) the shunned wife's quiet divorce.
Laxity: not sufficiently strict or severe, carelessness: lax security arrangements at the airports.
Fainthearted: lacking conviction or boldness or courage; "faint heart ne'er won fair lady".
Tenets: a principle or belief, especially one of the main principles of a religion or philosophy: the
tenets of classical liberalism.
Cut a deal: To reach an agreement with someone for something. If you come down on your sale
price just a little bit, I'm confident that we can cut a deal with this buyer
Plank: a fundamental point of a political or other programme: the central plank of the bill is the
curb on industrial polluters.
Zahra’s murder

Child labour and its horrific plight, Showing Elite injustice to lower class:

THERE is a Dickensian quality to the latest case of child abuse that has shocked the
country — such is the appalling social inequity it depicts. On Sunday, an eight-year-
old girl did something many of her age might have done: she let escape some birds
confined in a cage. Except, little Zahra was not a daughter of privilege — she was a
domestic worker in a Rawalpindi household and the pet parrots belonged to her
employers. Her ‘transgression’ allegedly earned the child such a brutal beating by
the couple that she succumbed to her injuries soon after being brought to hospital.
The suspects have been remanded into police custody. As per the FIR, Zahra
sustained injuries to her face, hands, below the ribcage, and legs. She may have also
been subjected to sexual assault, though tests are yet to confirm that.

The Modern-Day Slavery and its Impact on Poor People’s Lives:

Several of the worst aspects of Pakistani society coalesced in this incident — the
grinding poverty that blights large sections of it, the abhorrent sense of entitlement
among the ‘elite’, and an exploitative system that perpetuates the status quo either
through apathy or complicity. There is also a tacit acceptance of child labour, at
least when it is not in a ‘hazardous’ capacity. But, as we have seen time and again,
domestic settings are no less perilous to minor workers. In 2016, 10-year-old
Tayyaba nearly died of torture at the hands of her employers, an Islamabad district
court judge and his wife. In that instance, there was some measure of accountability,
though the couple’s prison sentence was reduced from three years to one. Zahra’s
murder is only the latest in a shameful litany of cases which illustrate that modern-
day slavery is alive and well here. In such a milieu, every man, woman and child
does not have inherent dignity: instead, dignity is determined by a sliding scale
according to socioeconomic class. Children, being the weakest, are the most
vulnerable, sometimes at the hands of their own parents who out of compulsion can
put them to work even where their well-being cannot be assured. It is about time that
the loopholes in the child labour laws that exist in certain sectors were closed and
legislation pertaining specifically to minor domestic workers enacted. Moreover, the
government must strengthen child protection laws so that minors can be rescued from
abusive or negligent home situations. We must not keep failing young Pakistanis
over and over again.

Dickensian: of or reminiscent of the novels of Charles Dickens, especially in suggesting the poor
social conditions or comically repulsive characters that they portray.
Appalling: greatly dismay or horrify: bankers are appalled at the economic incompetence of
some ministers
Transgression: infringe or go beyond the bounds of (a moral principle or other established
standard of behaviour).
Coalesced: come together and form one mass or whole, the separate details coalesce to form a
single body of scientific thought.
Grinding: crush, break up into small particles; be reduced to powder.
Blight: a thing that spoils or damages something: her remorse could be a blight on that
happiness.
Abhorrent: inspiring disgust and loathing; repugnant: racial discrimination was abhorrent to us all.
Complicity: the fact or condition of being involved with others in an illegal activity: they were
accused of complicity in the attempt to overthrow the government.
Perilous: exposed to imminent risk of disaster or ruin: the economy is in a perilous state.
Litany: a tedious recital or repetitive series: a litany of complaints.
Miliue: a person's social environment: Gregory came from the same aristocratic milieu as
Sidonius.
Targeting hospitals

Vandalism in Hospital, The unavoidable Conflict between Public and

Institutions :

OF late, a number of attacks targeting medical staff in hospitals in Karachi and

Peshawar have given rise to apprehension amongst healthcare workers. On May 15, a
mob vandalised a section of Karachi’s JPMC after attempting to forcibly retrieve the
body of a deceased patient who died after contracting the coronavirus. On May 29,
the relatives of a 50-year-old woman who tested positive for Covid-19 inflicted
damage on Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital after the critically ill patient passed
away. Just a few days earlier, dozens of people had vandalised Karachi’s Civil
Hospital and attacked doctors, allegedly because the medical staff delayed handing
over the body of a Covid-19 patient who died during treatment. The relatives of the
deceased patient rejected the test results, while the hospital said the result came out
positive after it was under process for some time. Horrifyingly, a female doctor was
slapped by a relative of the deceased.

Need of Balance between rights of the family, and protection of

Healthcare Staff:
Even as healthcare workers are applauded for their commitment to treating Covid-19
patients across the world and in our own country, these incidents highlight the lack of
trust between the public and institutions, as well as the failure to send out the right
message. Undoubtedly, the death of a loved one due to Covid-19 or any other reason
is painful for the family. But the guidelines from the government say there should be
a balance between the rights of the family and the risks of exposure to infection or
need for investigating the cause of death. The SOPs may include testing, draining and
disinfecting any wounds and suction of nasal and oral passages because there are
fears that the lungs of the deceased patient may contain the live virus. These steps
take time and are necessary to minimise the risk of exposure to healthcare and
mortuary staff. Authorities need to do everything possible to protect healthcare
workers who are treating Covid-19 patients at great personal risk. Better security and
improved public messaging on the SOPs for deceased patients would be a step in the
right direction.

Vandalise: action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property.

Inflicted: impose something unwelcome on: she is wrong to inflict her beliefs on everyone else.
DAWN OPINIONS

Ending stigma
(Haunting reality of a patriarchal society)

Introduction

PAKISTAN ranks amongst the highest for cases of ‘honour’-based murders. The
recent case of two women murdered in Garyom, Waziristan, for breaching honour
has prompted the usual outrage but also sweeping analyses about how the
commodification of women and mobile phones enable such crimes. Such limited
responses reveal the reluctance to deal with the issue of sexual desire as a key motive
in most ‘honour’ murders.

Honor killings predominant in Middle Eastern and South Asian regions

While Muslim cultures are not exclusive sites of honour killings, it has been
observed that these crimes are widespread in Middle Eastern and South Asian
contexts, and the Qisas and Diyat laws and community male gatekeeping are seen to
extend legal and moral impunity to perpetrators. Two baseline factors that define
honour killing practices are the legal histories of these societies and a preoccupation
with female sexual modesty.

Irrational justifying arguments add fuel to the fire to the one suffering

Three disputing arguments have been offered around honour killings. Some activists
argue for expunging the term ‘honour’ from such crimes. Certain diasporic scholars
agree that the category stigmatises cultures and should be considered a form of
domestic violence instead. Another opinion is that sexual autonomy is primarily a
Western concern and honour crimes are driven only by patriarchal greed. All three
approaches ignore or downplay the sexual agency of the victims/survivors of honour
crimes.

‘Honour’ crimes are not crimes of passion.

Honour crime be criminalized to curtail impunity relished

Firstly, in order to raise awareness of the practice of honour crime and the legal
impunity it enjoyed, activists struggled for years at national and international levels
to call attention to and expose this pride-restoring form of violence. They lobbied
lawmakers to criminalise the specific nature of this violence and ensure that the state
end the collusion between all actors involved. This would not be possible if these
specialised crimes were not exposed as ‘honour-based’ and just treated as normative
or domestic violence.
If we insist that all violence is the same, then should we also rename domestic
violence or marital rape, and not have special laws and measures to address these?
Should they be included under the rubric of generic assault or bodily harm, because
the site of where/how violence is committed should be rendered irrelevant?

Honor killings are curated cultural codes for restoring community’s glory

On the plea to not stigmatise cultures; honour killings are carefully curated events
that depend on cultural codes. The killings are almost exclusively committed by male
family members usually by the legally sanctioned guardian of the victim which lends
legal impunity or forgiveness under Qisas and Diyat. The consensus and support of
the wider family and community affords moral impunity. The commission of the
murder itself tends to be highly ritualistic and is based on a sentencing by informal
male-headed community tribunals. Victims are predominantly the women, killed not
just by their husbands, but also by their brothers, fathers and even extended family
members. These are not crimes of passion but deliberated methods of restoring wider
community honour and socio-sexual stability. The restorer of family/community
honour in Pakistan is valourised for being ghairatmand and not considered a
sociopath or an evil criminal. Justice for the victim is not the primary consideration
in the juridical schema of such crimes.

Women are victimized of honor code for exercising their moral agency

Thirdly, material factors like property disputes can be excuses but predominantly
honour codes are designed to regulate sexual behaviour. To insist that all women are
simply victims of rumours, male anger, or greed is to deny how women exercise their
sexual agency.

Analytical survey on ghastly culture of honor killing in Sindh

In her book on honour killings in Sindh, MNA Nafisa Shah has detailed the intersects
of law, culture and power of landowning mediators in Pakistan. For a published
article, I interviewed one influential landlord-mediator, Nadir Magsi, who has dealt
with hundreds of honour-based cases which confirm how women’s agency threatens
the patriarchal sexual order of communities. Education and mobile phones enable
women to exercise their agency.

Moral and sexual autonomy of labelled women is vandalized at the hand of

mediators

Mediators function as moral launderettes and potentially save lives of women who
breach honour codes. Some landowners traffic these women who are not even ‘free’
even after being rescued, cleansed or fined for the shame caused. Mostly, the
‘blackened’ woman is married off to another man not of her choice and her children
taken away from her. Even if money and power are taken out of the equation, the
sexual autonomy of women will still be regulated violently.

Conclusion

The point is that macro solutions based on academic defensiveness, or legal and
behavioural correctives are not going to disrupt the localised nature of honour crimes.
The backlash against activists who protest such crimes reveals a forceful consensus
that women’s agency should be suppressed. Are activists prepared to confront this
opposition and to stop deflecting and pretending that victims are never guilty of
sexual transgressions, in order to strategise for women’s legal and social right to
independence?
Dialect of death
(Nothing can unite us, not even our national dialect Urdu.
What we only got in common is the vulnerability to virus.)

F.S. Aijazuddin
Literay Master Dr Farrukhi and the unfortunate Case of Urdu:
IS Urdu a dying language, or is it just that those with a command over the language
are a dying breed?

Whoever read of the death on June 1 of the litterateur Dr Asif Farrukhi felt
diminished by it. It is four years since his friend and mentor Intizar Husain died on
February 2016. Intizar sahib was 91 years old when he passed away, full of years and
laden with honours that he enjoyed, as honours should be, in compos mentis. He
received the Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 2007. Six years later, his name was shortlisted for the
Man Booker International Prize. His literary output spread over a lifetime of
endeavour was acknowledged at the Lahore Literary Festival in 2014, and some
months later, the usually xenophobic French lauded him with the Ordre des Arts et
des Lettres.

In Dr Asif Farrukhi’s case, he was given the Prime Minister’s Literary Award by the
Pakistan Academy of Letters in 1997, followed by the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz. Future
honours will adorn his tombstone.

Dr Farrukhi’s presence at any literary festival was a lesson in modesty.

Wedded to public health by training, Dr Farrukhi’s public mistress was literature. His
output as an author and as an editor were eclipsed by his contribution as co-founder
of the seminal Karachi Literary Festival and the Islamabad Literary Festival, both of
which he managed with his collaborator Ms Ameena Saiyid. Inevitably, petty politics
slither like a serpent into even literary Edens. Dr Farrukhi and Ameena quit the KLF
and created its clone — the Adab Festival.

Dr Farrukhi’s presence at any literary festival — whether one managed by him or

simply attended by him — was a lesson in self-effacing temperance and considerate
modesty. He never advertised his talents, preferring to let others bask in their own
weaker sunshine. Given the rostrum, though, he spoke with knowledge, authority and
conviction. He spoke in Urdu not simply because it was his mother tongue, but
because one suspects he regarded English as his stepfather tongue, and Urdish as an
illegitimate dialect. His life was a battle against the elitist attitudes of those students
who, in their applications for higher studies abroad, describe Urdu as a foreign
language.
It is ironical that Dr Farrukhi, himself a physician, should have succumbed to an
illness (diabetes) to which none of his professional colleagues could find a cure. His
name will be repeated at many literary festivals and gatherings in the future. His true
legacy though will be his passion for language, for the space literature should be
given in any society that aspires to call itself from , and for his selfless endeavour in
making literature festivals an elixir for the old and a stimulant for the young.

Is Urdu language on the verge of Destruction:

A language dies when people speaking or writing it well die. Language death has
been described as “a process in which the level of a speech community’s linguistic
competence in their language variety decreases, eventually resulting in no native or
fluent speakers of the variety”. Academic linguists quote Hebrew as an example.
“Hebrew,” according to Claude Hagège, “was a dead language at the beginning of
the 19th century. It existed as a scholarly written language, but there was no way to
say ‘I love you’ and ‘pass the salt’ — the French linguists’ criteria for detecting life.”
One can understand why these two phrases — to do with love and gastronomy —
should be given such prominence by the sensuous French. What might the
equivalents in Pakistan be? ‘I love myself’ and ‘Pass me my mask’?

Adhesive force of urdu as binding national unity is shattered to pieces

In 1947, our founding fathers had hoped that Urdu would be the adhesive that would
bind our provincial disparities together. The separation of East Pakistan in 1971 put
paid to that. Since then, regional languages such as Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi,
or dialects like Seraiki, Hindko, and Brahui (to name a few) have struggled for air.
Whoever hoped that the 18th Amendment passed in 2010 would encourage provinces
to implement their own curriculum and syllabi must wait. Meanwhile, the
development of a national curriculum acceptable to all constituent elements of our
federation should not degenerate into an exercise in political horse-trading. If that
happens, all one can expect after 13 years of imperfect education will be a badly
trained mule.

It is a humiliation that the only common factor pervasive throughout our country
today is not a unified approach to family planning or education or social services, but
a common vulnerability to Covid-19. Unable to live together, we are being taught by
this virus how to die, one by one.

Pandemic and lack of unity among provinces will be catastrophic for Pakistan

Years from now, survivors will wonder why our generation could not get agree on a
unified policy on lockdowns. The federal government has its own, provincial
governments their own, and the disaffected, disobedient public its own. We blabber
at cross purposes. Death, however, speaks only one dialect.
Losing without a fight
Khurram Husain

The writer is a member of staff.

I HAVE not seen a government abdicate all responsibility to safeguard its citizens
from clear and present danger so comprehensively as this government has just done.
It was a moment of disbelief watching the prime minister announce that people
should take care, try to stay indoors — and then announce a reopening of tourism so
people in large numbers start going to areas like Murree, Swat, Kaghan and Naran
and the northern areas, where healthcare facilities are already in very short supply.

Expecting that these tourists will ‘observe SOPs’ or otherwise not be carrying the
virus with them is a weak and distant hope. More likely, this step will open the
floodgates of the Covid-19 infection for areas that are already too ill-equipped to
handle the situation.

Those who keep invoking the plight of the poor and the daily wagers to make the
point that this is a fight the country cannot afford are missing the point entirely. This
was a moment to bring far-reaching changes in the country, to turn the focus of the
government away from rentier elites and the security establishment and towards the
people. This was the perfect opportunity to start crafting the architecture of what
Imran Khan envisioned. In fact, campaigned on: to build a welfare state.

‘We gave you the SOPs, we told you to be careful’ they will say as they
blame the people.

The elements with which to build this state are there, as are the resources. What is
lacking is the will. This moment presented the perfect opportunity to forge that will,
because for a while, back in mid-March, everybody was on the same page ie the fight
against the virus was the top priority. The means with which to deliver social
protection, for example, are there. As are the resources with which to ramp up the
capacity of the country’s healthcare system. Contact tracing, widespread testing and
all other elements with which the fight against the virus could be waged are all
possible to undertake, given the will.

Take one example. One of the fastest-growing segments in Pakistan’s payments

system is mobile phone banking. There are currently 27 providers for this service
(I’m talking about mobile phone banking provided by the banks, not by the telecoms,
which is a different story). Consider the numbers. In the first quarter of FY2017,
there were 1.2 million transactions through this channel, totalling Rs21 billion. Two
years later — quarter two of FY2019 — that figure rose to 8.5m and Rs159.9bn as
the total amount transacted through this channel.
In the quarter two of FY2020, these figures have now risen to 17.8m transactions and
Rs382.5bn transacted in total. The numbers are more than doubling every year, faster
than any other channel in our payments system, whether ATM or point of sale or
internet banking or any other. If you include mobile banking services provided by the
telecom companies, these figures skyrocket. The number of merchants servicing
clients for these channels is also growing rapidly.

It is disingenuous when those who know better argue that we cannot reach the poor
because they do not have bank accounts, to take one example. Everybody who uses a
mobile phone has a bank account because all mobile numbers now come with a
mobile bank account attached with them. If the will to use these channels, coupled
with all the ways in which databases of the poor can be built, was present, there were
any number of ways in which a vast social protection scheme could be built.

Instead, what we had was what the prime minister disingenuously called a
‘construction package’. The reason I say it was disingenuous is because it was, in
fact, never a ‘construction package’. Study its details and you will realise it was not
designed to restart work at construction sites. It was designed to restart the buying
and selling of plot files and flats.

In short, it was designed to restart speculation in the property market, and that’s not
surprising given who all were providing input in crafting the package. Latest figures
released by the cement industry show that there was a 37 per cent plunge in cement
sales in the country in the month of May. The construction package was announced
in early April, and the prime minister said work should begin by April 14.

There is no way to tell if any work has indeed begun in the buying and selling of plot
files because this is a totally undocumented area and the package contained an
amnesty scheme to plough black money — whether illicit or just tax-evaded — to
acquire assets in the property market without any questions being asked as to the
source.

With these kinds of reflexes, to turn to the billionaires and speculator elite for advice
in the middle of a public health emergency, it is not surprising that the government
has been directed towards laying down its arms in this critical fight with the
argument that ‘the cure is worse than the disease’. What is grievous and downright
pathetic to note is that this surrender has been done in the name of the poor, whereas
it is actually at the behest of the rich, who do not want to see their businesses closed
any longer.

So if you’re poor in Naya Pakistan, and you want to feed your family, you have no
choice but to go and face the infection and consider it one more occupational hazard.
They have built their SOPs and thrown the gates open, and now that the infection is
spreading like wildfire, it is the people themselves who will be blamed. ‘We gave
you the SOPs, we told you to be careful’ they will say down the road.

Perhaps it was a futile hope to harbour in the first place, that the rulers of this country
will rise to a challenge, seize the opportunity, and undertake a far-reaching
renegotiation of the compact between the ruler and the ruled. Instead, they decided to
listen to traders and speculators, and throw the country to the mercy of the virus.
Thousands still missing
I.A. Rehman

SINCE the issue of Covid 19 has been decided — that those who cannot avoid
getting infected cannot be saved — and those in command are not open to changing
their view, there is no point in talking about the epidemic for the moment. Instead, let
us divert our attention to a festering sore that seems to have disappeared from the
executive’s radar altogether.

Last month, APP reported that the chairman of the Commission of Inquiry on
Enforced Disappearances (CoIoED) had through his personal efforts disposed of no
less than 4,523 cases of missing persons till April 30, 2020. Great credit is due to
retired justice Javed Iqbal who despite his heavy responsibilities as NAB chief has
not given up the chairmanship of the commission on disappearances. The number of
cases disposed of till May 31 has risen to 4,544 (out of 6,674 cases reported to the
commission over nine years). But these figures conceal the unmitigated suffering of
thousands of families who have been virtually dying every day out of fear that their
loved ones will never return.

The CoIoED figures for Balochistan have never satisfied any keen observer. Between
March 1, 2011, and March 1, 2020, only 483 cases were reported till May 31, 2020.
It is said 334 cases have been disposed of and that only 164 are pending. Who can
believe these figures?

Even by CoIoED’s reckoning 2,130 cases are still pending.

The 6,674 cases reported to the CoIoED represent a smaller figure for enforced
disappearances because the larger number has not been reported for a variety of
reasons. Out of the 4,544 cases disposed of, 3,598 persons are said to have been
traced but the number of persons who are said to have returned home is 2,053. The
other persons said to have been traced include 823 detainees at internment centres
and 510 in prisons facing trial, while 213 have died and 948 cases were dropped as
not being instances of enforced disappearance.

A preliminary question is: why did it take the authorities such a long time to trace the
missing persons who were rotting in internment centres and prisons? And the fact
that even by the CoIoED’s reckoning 2,130 cases are still pending is cause for
concern. That is not a small number of lives at stake.

What is the situation now after nine years of efforts by the CoIoED to recover the
missing persons? This year’s figures show that in January, there were 50 new
complaints and 69 were disposed of; in February, the figures were 48 and 42; in
March, 24 and 37; in April, 33 and 10; and in May, 13 and 21.
The most significant fact about this year’s figures is that enforced disappearances are
still being reported. Even during the last three months, when Covid-19 had made
travel and postal communication virtually impossible and the CoIoED office was not
supposed to be open, 70 new complaints were received. That many cases could not
have been reported cannot be denied. Enforced disappearances thus remains a live
and critical issue.

What does the CoIoED say about its achievements from February to May 2020? In
February, 29 people were traced, 14 returned home, 15 comprised the rest of the
cases — ie cases dropped, dead bodies found or persons detained or on bail. In
March, 20 were traced, 19 returned, 17 comprised the rest. In the same order, the
April figures show six, five and four, and May 14, 13 and seven.

An analysis of 41 persons who are said to have returned home shows that 14 of them
belonged to Punjab, nine to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, six to Islamabad, three each to
Karachi, Azad Kashmir, and the tribal agencies, two to Balochistan, and one to
Gilgit-Baltistan.

Among those who are said to have returned home, the number of people saying that
they had gone away somewhere without informing their families has shown a sharp
increase. The possibility that these persons made up such stories in order to escape
retaliation by law-enforcement agencies certainly deserves to be probed.

Many other cases attract suspicion of concealment. Shahid Husain from Karachi was
reported missing in 2015. It was in January 2020 that he was said to have returned
home. No information is provided as to where he had been for more than four years.
Maulana Gul Zada from Peshawar disappeared in 2017 and was found on Feb 26,
2020 to have returned home. Similarly, Abdullah from Peshawar disappeared in 2016
and was reported to have returned on Feb 6, 2020.

Abdul Wahab from Rawalpindi disappeared in 2014 and said he was kept in
confinement for two and a half years. By whom? Muhammad Aslam from
Muzaffargarh was picked up from a bus in 2017 and released after two and a half
years. He could not recognise his tormentors. Nasar Abbas from Bhakkar was picked
up in July 2017 and released in December 2019.

Subhan Allah from Lahore was lucky. He was picked up in May 2019 and released in
December the same year. Rahimullah from Rawalpindi was also fortunate. He was
picked up in August 2019 and released the same month. Muhammad Yafis Naveed
from Multan was abducted on Aug 8, 2019 and released on March 5, 2020.

It was the duty of the CoIoED to ascertain who had picked up the persons mentioned
here and report them to the competent authorities for necessary action.

The need to seriously address the issue of disappearances is clear. For years, the UN
Working Group on Enforced Disappearances has been calling upon the government
to reconstitute the present commission, increase its financial and human resources,
and declare enforced disappearance a criminal offence.

The government must also release the 2010 report prepared by three retired judges
that will reveal how disappearances are effected and by whom. It is also time
Pakistan ratified the UN convention on the subject. A bill to declare enforced
disappearance was introduced in parliament in 2014 to make disappearance a
criminal offence. If the government wants to make a better law the time is now.