edit in The Nation, Oct 23, 2022
Enforced disappearances, racial profiling and harassment are pressing problems that human rights groups and victim groups have been advocating against for years; unfortunately, the government has mostly turned a blind eye towards their concerns. This year, fortunately, the Islamabad High Court took an interest in this issue, and Chief Justice of the Islamabad High Court Athar Minallah has directed the government to form a special commission to look into the concerns raised and has kept asking the government for updates. The government appeared to be responding- in September, Shahbaz Sharif said he would oversee the meetings and reports of the commission, and a few days ago, the Islamabad High Court in a judgment laid down the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the prevention and investigation of enforced disappearances in the Islamabad Capital Territory.
Whether the commission will churn out solutions to resolve what has been a crisis for years is to be seen. So far, three meetings of the commission have been held, where grievances have been heard but no concrete action has been taken so far. The executive director of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) informed participants of the commission that upon receiving complaints of racial harassment of Baloch students, several steps were being taken inter alia, including checking of unauthorised entry into universities, enforcement of the harassment policy, pre-cautioning the administration of all universities and establishment of facilitation desks inside universities for redressal of such complaints. A lot of similar government departments were called over as well. This hardly seems a conducive approach. It may be a better solution to listen to the Baloch students themselves; being briefed about laws and policies doesn’t work when harassment and targeting happen in insidious indirect ways.
The commission must create and enforce the framework that protects students from such risks. The solution the government has presented, of a cabinet committee on enforced disappearances which would then submit a report, is a tried and failed strategy that does not match the gravity of this human rights issue.
https://www.nation.com.pk/23-Oct-2022/investigating-racial-profiling
