Shia community feels like they are being targeted in country, says Pak political group

Islamabad [Pakistan] August 10 (ANI): A Shia political group in Pakistan expressed that their community feels like they are being targeted in the country.

The remarks from Maulana Sadiq Jaffery, Secretary-General of Majlis Wahdat-i-Muslimeen came while he was asking the whereabouts of missing Shia persons in the country, Dawn reported. Meanwhile, Maulana Haider Abbas of Pakistan’s Joint Action Committee (JAC) for Shia missing persons and families also said that “This country has a law, this country has a constitution, and yet all this is happening here in this country.”

“Will someone at least tell us what these people who have gone missing did? If they are guilty please take them to court. We believe in the system. We believe in punishing the guilty as per the law,” Abbas said. Earlier, Pakistan’s Sindh High Court had reprimanded the Imran Khan government for showing disinterest in the cases of missing persons and deplored that no legislation had so far been made against enforced disappearances.

Earlier, the JAC had also called for a nationwide protest from April onwards if their family members are not recovered by end of the month, as reported by Dawn. JAC members said that despite repeated assurances from the Pakistan authorities, the missing persons had not been traced. Enforced disappearances have been a long stain on Pakistan’s human rights record.

Despite the pledges of successive governments to criminalise the practice, there has been a very slow movement on legislation, while people continue to be forcibly disappeared with impunity, Dawn reported. Enforced disappearance has been used as a tool by Pakistan to silence the minority communities. While countless abductees have been killed, many of them are still facing inhuman torture in army secrets cells. (ANI)