ISLAMABAD: Relatives of missing persons protested outside the National Press Club and a large number of people participated to express solidarity with the family members who have been waiting for their loved ones to return since long.

Former Senator Farhatullah Babar, who also visited the protestors, said the voices against extra judicial 1(illings, mysterious disappearances of citizens withimpunityandGuantanamo Bay type internment centres in tribal areas are becoming louder by the day and gaining traction with the people throughout the country, predicting also that the state will no longer be able to suppress it.

He said that some invisible hands were now manipulating workers of political parties at lower levels against challengers of state narrative and warned that such efforts will backfire.

Mr Babar called for making public the report of the 2012 visit to Pakistan of the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances as well as the report of the first Commission on Enforced Disappearances.

He said that although the present commission had been in place for six years and had also recovered hundreds of missing persons, it had miserably failed in exposing the hands behind the mysterious disappearanceseven thoughthereis provision in the law that empowered and required it to do so.

He called for disbanding the present commission and replacing it with a new one which should also include expert investigators as members and be required to make its report public.

If the state did not meet the demands of the people and declared indigenous movements like the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement anti state, it will have to brace itselffor a severe backlash, he warned.

The former senator said that 2018 is election year and urged political parties to include mysterious disappearances and other related human rights issues in their party manifestos.

He said that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto has already directed the manifesto committee in this regard. The protest was arranged with the help of Defence of Human Rights Pakistan. A Reporter