ISLAMABAD
On Tuesday, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) demanded that the caretaker prime minister and the chief election commissioner help locate their missing leaders and employees.
PTI Secretary General Omar Ayub Khan wrote to both PM Anwaarul Haq Kakar and CEC Sikandar Sultan Raja to express concern about the whereabouts of missing party leaders and members.
Omar claims that the provincial governors have also been given copies of the letters.
Those PTI leaders whose whereabouts are unknown at this time are included in Omar’s letter. Sheikh Rashid, leader of the Awami Muslim League (AML), was among them. Also implicated were Farrukh Habib, Sadaqat Abbasi, Usman Dar, Owais Younis, Irfan Saleem, Abdul Karim Khan, and Irfan Saleem.
When discussing measures to ensure a “free, fair, and impartial election,” the PTI leader called the issue of enforced disappearances “the most serious of all the violations of the law and the Constitution” and “the most blatant and open form of pre-poll rigging.”
Omar said that the enforced abduction of these people was a clear breach of the Constitution of Pakistan. The need of finding out what happened to them and bringing their captors to justice was emphasised.
An excerpt from the letter reads, “This effort, with the sole objective of trying to break the PTI, Pakistan’s most popular political party, also makes a total mockery of the Elections Act, 2017. This campaign of enforced disappearances contradicts Section 230 (1)(d), which states that the caretaker government must be impartial to every person and political party, and Section 186 (d), which states that no official may execute any act calculated to influence the outcome of the election.
Finally, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, to which Pakistan is obligated under customary international law, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights are both violated by these disappearances. So is the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.PAGINA NACIONAL
