Pakistan: JAC raises issue of Shia missing persons, says children growing up like orphans

Karachi [Pakistan], August 11 : The Joint Action Committee (JAC) for Shia Missing Persons on Monday raised their concerns over the issue of missing persons from its community and said that their children are growing up like orphans.
Speaking at a press conference here at the Karachi Press Club, Maulana Haider Abbas of the JAC for Shia Missing Persons said: "When you take away a family member, it is not just his family that suffers. The society also suffers and lives under fear and insecurity. Imagine not knowing what has become of your loved ones. Think about what mothers missing their sons are going through. They have no peace. Think about the wives missing their husbands. What do they tell their children?" reported Dawn.
A missing person's wife, carrying her husband's framed photograph in her hands, said that her children feel like orphans.
"There are many more mothers like me who don't even know if they are giving their children false hope by telling them that their fathers will return one day. Our children are growing up without their fathers like orphans. If their fathers are alive, then please return [them] to us," she pleaded, reported Dawn.
"It is not a matter of days or months. The issue of missing persons from our community has been pending for years now without any redress. This country has a law, this country has a Constitution, and yet all this is happening here in this country," said a senior leader of the Joint Action Committee for Shia Missing Persons.
"We have been raising our voices against this grave injustice. We have been asking the Army, the government, the prime minister but to no avail. They have all been very nice to us. They have all told us, promised us that the issue will be resolved and our loved ones will be returned to their homes soon but nothing happens," said Abbas.
"Recently, we protested and held a sit-in for 28 days outside the Quaid-i-Azam's mausoleum and as a result of that two persons, who had gone missing from Quetta, returned to their homes. But there are still some 14 people missing from Karachi for years about whom we don't know anything," he said.
"Will someone at least tell us what these people who have gone missing did? If they are guilty please take them to court. We believe in the system. We believe in punishing the guilty as per the law," he said.
The Secretary-General of the Majlis Wahdat-i-Muslimeen (MWM), Maulana Sadiq Jaffery, also said that the Shia community felt like they were being targeted, reported Dawn.
"Our protest will continue throughout Muharram and after Muharram, it will grow bigger as we go countrywide," he said.
In the last few decades, sectarian violence has gripped Pakistan with Shia and Ahmadi's believers being attacked and their shrines targeted.
Pakistan is reeling under a new surge of sectarian violence targeting Shia and other religious minorities across the country, threatening new rounds of instability in the Muslim majority nation.
The minorities have been subjected to various forms of oppression in the country with the tacit support of the state. Incident of abduction and forced marriages of girls from minority communities are often reported.