Pakistan: Missing persons’ families not hopeful about Shehbaz Sharif's promise
Quetta, Pakistan: Sammi Deen Baloch, the daughter of Dr Deen Muhammad who has been missing since mid-2009, is not feeling positive about Pakistan's new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s assurance that he will raise the missing persons’ issue with the relevant quarters.
“This is nothing new,” she tells The Dawn.
Deen Muhammad went missing from Ornach in Khuzdar district on June 28, 2009, while he was on a night duty at a hospital. Since then, his whereabouts are unknown, reports the Pakistani newspaper.
Following persistent campaigning by family members of these missing people and human rights groups, the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances was established in March 2011, but that too managed to trace only a handful of those missing.
Sammi has been speaking about the issue of missing persons for several years now.
“Ever since the PPP came to power in 2008, all prime ministers have talked about the missing persons,” she tells The Dawn over the phone in a coarse voice. “All of them have vowed to address the issue. But there has been no progress to this day.”
“Like Shehbaz Sharif, other prime ministers, including Imran Khan, assured us that the issue of Baloch missing persons is their top priority, but we have yet to see the results,” she says.
Support Our Journalism
We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism
IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.