‘4000 Pakistanis handed over to foreigners
for dollars’
April 17, 2018 The News
ISLAMABAD:
National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman and National Commission for
Enforced Disappearances President Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal on Monday said
that during former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf’s tenure, over
4,000 Pakistanis were handed over to foreigners for dollars, local media
reported.
Briefing the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Human
Rights over the issue of missing persons in the country, Javed Iqbal said that
70 percent of the missing individuals were involved in ‘militancy’ and that the
recovered individuals “were too scared to open up about their experiences”.
Speaking about the missing Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM)
workers, the commission chief said, “MQM showed no interest in recovery of
their missing workers. “MQM had its government but did not take the case of
missing persons in Sindh seriously. The MQM workers who went missing two
decades ago have not been recovered yet,” he added.
Javed Iqbal continued that during former president General
(retd) Pervez Musharraf’s tenure, the-then interior minister Aftab Sherpao
handed over 4,000 Pakistanis to foreigners. He added that Musharraf had himself
admitted to having done so and that parliament did not raise its voice against
the former president and interior minister. “He should have been questioned
that according to which law he handed people to foreign elements,” Iqbal added.
He said, “Musharraf and his lawmakers were given dollars for
handing over the people.” The NAB chairman said that he was in favour of
placing a ban on foreign NGOs working within Pakistan. “These NGOs are working
for foreign elements and they do get their funding from abroad. If I had the
authority, I would have placed a ban on the organisations,” he added.
Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal also briefed the committee about
the performance of the commission. He said that from March 2011 to February
2018, the commission resolved a total of 3,219 cases.
Currently, he added, the commission was investigating 1,710
cases, while an additional 368 cases were received from the United Nations (UN)
Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances during the past few
years, majority of which had been resolved.
During the meeting, committee member Naseema Hafeez
requested for the media to provide coverage to Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM)
leader Manzoor Pashteen, saying “He is fighting for the rights of missing
persons and their families.”
To this end, Javed Iqbal responded that he would call upon
Pashteen regarding the issue and that he would ask him for the list of missing
persons. He said that often the kidnapped people refrain from sharing details
of the incident out of fear. “A terrorist’s family should not be labelled a
terrorist,” he argued.
The NAB chief said that statistics shared for the missing
persons in Balochistan were contradictory to reality. “There have been several
militant groups present in the province and many ‘missing persons’ have gone along
with them,” he said. Former CM Balochistan Aslam Raisani and Nasrullah Baloch
had been tasked to provide with the list but to no avail, the NAB chief
complained.
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