WASHINGTON: A roundtable discussion broadcast on Wednesday by the Voice of America’s Urdu service supported a call for the establishment of a national commission to look into the unexplained disappearance of a large number of Pakistani citizens.

Those who took part in the discussion were IA Rehman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), former federal minister Iqbal Hyder and former Justice Asif Jan of the Lahore High Court.

Iqbal Hyder said it was not correct that those who had disappeared had disappeared on their own to join jihadi groups. There was plenty of evidence available, he explained, to prove that most of the disappeared from Balochistan were Baloch nationalists and they had been taken by the ISI. He called for the setting up of a national commission to find out the truth. He also urged the government to sign the UN Convention on Enforced Disappearances, which would establish Pakistan’s goodwill in the matter.

IA Rehman said it was not enough for government representatives to appear in court and say that they knew nothing about those who had disappeared because it was the government’s responsibility to investigate where and in whose custody those individuals, whose number runs into thousands, were. He said the HRCP had presented a list of 158 disappeared people to the Supreme Court. In Balochistan, according to community leaders, as many as 4,000 people had disappeared.

Many families choose to keep quiet when one of their members disappears because they are afraid that if they go public with the information, it may endanger the life of the one who has been taken. Rehamn also spoke about the recent intimidation of the press, noting that for the first time in the history of Pakistan, uniformed police had attacked a media establishment. The idea obviously was to put the media on notice through the employment of scare tactics. The latter apology does not make up for what took place, he added. He said some who had disappeared and returned had provided information as to where they were and who had taken them. The finger of accusation was clearly pointed at the government’s intelligence agencies. Some of the released ones did not want to open their mouths for fear of being taken in again. Those who were released were warned by the agencies that had taken them not to talk about their experience.

Former Justice Jan said it was the ISI and the MI that were mostly responsible for disappearances. He said there must not be a “state within a state” and there should be no “invisible government”, which was the case in Pakistan today. He said there were five main intelligence agencies at work in the country but no one should be above the law.

He stressed that Article 4 of the constitution enshrined the inalienable rights of a citizen of Pakistan and nobody could take those rights away from him. He paid tribute to lawyers in Lahore who had set up a free legal aid service for those who could not afford the costs of going to court, that being true of most families of the disappeared ones.

The programme, hosted by Akmal Aleemi and Murtaza Solangi, received phone calls from the wives of two disappeared Pakistanis. Mrs Sarki, the US-based wife of a Sindhi activist, said that her husband had been taken while on a visit to Pakistan.

She said despite efforts by the Pakistani ambassador, Mahmud Ali Durrani, and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee, no clue as to where her husband was had been found so far. She said her two teenage children ask her where their father is and she has no answer for them. She plans to go to Pakistan in June this year and ask the government where her husband is.

The programme also heard from Mrs Amna Masood Janjua from Islamabad whose husband, who ran a computer college and a travel agency, was taken in July 2005, from all accounts by the ISI. There had been no clue since as to his whereabouts.

She said her husband had no political or religious affiliations and his disappearance had ravaged the family. She said she had two teenage sons who kept asking her, “Where is our Abu and why have they taken him?” She said, her voice cracking, “I have no answer to give them.”