ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar on Wednesday told the Islamabad High Court (IHC) that the government is facing an armed struggle in Balochistan, asserting that the armed individuals are fighting to “create a new state”.
The premier said that the government is working according to the Constitution and law on the issue of enforced disappearances.
PM Kakar said the government and ordinary citizens did not take up arms, but it is the responsibility of the state to protect the people.
“The state must deal differently with armed people,” he asserted.
Responding to the premier’s statement, Justice Kayani said: “No court is asking to protect non-state actors.”
He added that there is undoubtedly a war, which our army and institutions are fighting.
The prime minister’s statement came during his appearance before the high court in the missing Baloch students case. This was PM Kakar’s first appearance at the court that summoned him for the third time after he skipped the summons twice.
During the hearing, PM Kakar said that the violations of non-state actors are also recorded, recalling the killing of a former Balochistan chief justice who was heading an inquiry committee pertaining to a relevant issue.
PM Kakar added that the country’s paramilitary forces and counter-terrorism agencies are blamed for the issue. However, he added, no one remembered the violation of human rights when people were burnt alive in a bus on the coastal highway and a Chaudhary or Gujjar are killed after identification by the outlaws.
The premier, when talking about the issue, said: “They don’t want to resolve the issue and that it is not right to consider the entire state criminal because of them.”
It should be noted that the court, during the previous hearing of the case, had formed an inquiry committee comprising the director generals of the Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence for the recovery of the missing persons.
However, the order to form the committee has been challenged in the Supreme Court.
During his appearance today, the prime minister shared that the families and representatives of the missing person put the number of missing persons at 5,000.
The premier also spoke on the issue of profiling students on a linguistic basis.
“There are deficiencies and flaws in the system, if there is no evidence, how to punish whom?” he added.
The court, after PM Kakar’s remarks, said that there has not been a single statement that someone is in the custody of CTD in the last 24 months.
“The failure of the state institutions is that they could not prosecute them. There is a flaw in the law and there is no evidence, so there is a need to improve it,” Justice Mohsin Kayani noted.
The judge added that the law is the same and has to be followed.
The caretaker premier said it was not the domain of the caretaker government to look into it, but the incoming government will be requested to do so.
