Pakistan: Struggle for rights focuses on missing persons

From all parts of Pakistan society, people demonstrated June 3 in Rawalpindi, called together by the Campaign for Missing Persons. The Asian Human Rights Commission identified 52 illegal torture and detention centers in Pakistan under the Pervez Musharraf regime “where missing persons are held for long periods of time in order to force them to confess” that they were involved “in terrorist and sabotage activities. The information about the places of illegal detention was collected from the persons who were detained in these centers for several years after arrest. Their whereabouts were never made known to their family members.”

Lawyers, who had begun the movement last year to reinstate anti-Musharraf Supreme Court Judge Chowdary, rallied June 9 against the president. They burned Musharraf in effigy and called for his removal. That the struggle against the regime is growing rapidly could be seen when 250,000 ex-officers of the Pakistan military demanded that Musharraf be put on trial and receive the death penalty.

—John Catalinotto