Supporters of Awami Worker Party hold a demonstration to condemn the missing human rights activists, in Karachi, Pakistan, Tuesday on January 10, 2017. (AP photo)
Islamabad: Human rights activists in Pakistan on Tuesday rallied to protest the disappearance of four activists over the past one week and asked the government to take measures to locate them.
Leftist liberals accuse that security agencies or militants might be behind the forced disappearances though nobody has claimed responsibility for the abduction.
Protest rallies were held in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore, where journalists, civil society supporters and rights activists demanded urgent measures to find the four missing activists.
The missing activist include Salman Haider, a poet and university professor, who disappeared on Friday in Islamabad. Two days before bloggers Waqas Goraya and his cousin Asim Saeed went missing from Lahore.
Ahmad Raza Naseer, another blogger suffering from polio, was abducted yesterday in Sheikhupura near Lahore. The disappearance echoed in the Senate, the upper house of parliament, on Monday where opposition pressed government to recover the activists.
Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan said that all steps were being taken to recover the missing activists.
“Safe recovery of the missing social activists is a priority of the government,” Kahn said while briefing lawmakers in Senate on the missing activists.
“The government neither pursues the policy of getting its own citizens disappeared nor will tolerate this,” Radio Pakistan quoted the minister as saying.
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and Human Rights Watch expressed serious concern over the disappearance of the activists and asked Pakistan government to locate them.
Protest rallies were held in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore, where journalists, civil society supporters and rights activists demanded urgent measures to find the four missing activists.
Source: News18