Pakistan approves financial compensation for families of ‘missing persons’ after decade-long effort

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government on Friday approved a financial package of Rs5 million ($17,925) for each family of a “missing person,” pointing out that a commission had been working on the issue for almost a decade.
Hundreds of political workers, rights activists and professionals have gone missing in Pakistan over the years, particularly in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the southwestern Balochistan provinces, where militants have waged a war against the state for long.
Families say people picked up by security forces often disappear for years, and are sometimes found dead, with no official explanation. Pakistani security agencies have been blamed in many cases, though they have always denied involvement in such disappearances.
“The cabinet today has approved an aid package of five million rupees for each family of missing persons,” Federal Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told the media in Islamabad after the cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
The development comes just hours after a Baloch rights group signed an agreement with the local authorities in Gwadar to call off its sit-in that began last Sunday.
The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) staged the protest demonstration to highlight the alleged human rights abuses, extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances of Baloch nationals in the province.
“Terrorism engulfed Pakistan after the Afghan war that created a number of internal challenges including the issue of missing persons,” the minister continued, adding a commission had been formed that worked for nearly a decade to address the problem.
He highlighted “positive cooperation” from the country’s powerful intelligence agencies to resolve the issue.
“A report has been compiled after consultations with the state institutions and intelligence agencies,” he said. “The state is like a mother, so a relief is being extended to the victims as per this principle.”
The law minister informed that “only 23 percent of missing persons cases are pending” as a total of 10,200 cases were brought before the commission working on the issue and 8,000 of them had already been resolved.
“The government is committed to resolving all cases of the missing persons by utilizing all available resources,” he added.