In an apparent hardening of its attitude in missing people cases, the Islamabad High Court in Pakistan ordered the government to issue notices to all past executives from former president Pervez Musharraf to current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to explain what the court described as “undeclared tacit approval of the policy regarding enforced disappearances.”

The directives, passed by Islamabad High Court Chief Justice Athar Minallah, came on Sunday while hearing a case related to the disappearance of journalist Mudassar Mahmood Naro and five other people.

Relatives of hundreds of people across the country, mostly from its restive Balochistan and northwestern FATA region, who were forcibly disappeared alleged by people linked to the country’s security establishment, have long been demanding justice in tracing their people. Successive governments, supposedly under the pressure from the military, have for long avoided taking any concrete measures in this direction.

In his order, Justice Minallah remarked, “Pervez Musharraf has candidly conceded in his autobiography ‘In the Line of Fire’ that ‘enforced disappearances’ was an undeclared policy of the state.”

“The involvement or even a perception of the involvement of the armed forces in acts amounting to a violation of human rights and freedom of the citizens weakens and undermines the rule of law” he was quoted as saying by Dawn.

Speaking on the roles played by past rulers, the chief justice said, “The onus is on each chief executive to rebut the presumption and to explain why they may not be tried for the offense of high treason.”

In most of these cases, relatives of missing people more often than not have to approach the court for seeking direction from the state to lodge a first information report (FIR).

“Relatives of victims of enforced disappearance are already often reluctant to report cases or exchange information with Government officials, either for fear of reprisals or lack of trust,” the United Nations Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) noted in a statement last year.

The Islamabad High Court also expressed its displeasure over the lack of coverage these issues get in mainstream media. “It appears that they (media) either prefer to ignore the worst form of abuse of state power and violation of fundamental rights or they do not consider it a priority,” Dawn reported the chief justice as saying.

(SAM)