KARACHI, Nov 24: On a quiet Sunday evening, the camp put up for missing men of Balochistan outside the Karachi Press Club was full of visitors and families. They had come to show solidarity with the families who covered a long and difficult journey from Quetta to Karachi on foot, while most of them shared the same stories as the families they had come to greet and pacify.

Inside the camp, vice president of the Voice of Missing Baloch Persons (VOMBP) `Mama` Qadeer Baloch was busy making plans for the coming days.

He said: `Within a day or two we`ll announce a seminar to speak about our ordeals in detail.

Speaking about the visitors, he said: `Apart from Baloch families, a few of the people going towards the Arts Council also stopped by to speak to us. It felt good to know that they cared.

But so far, no one from the provincial government came to meet them, he pointed out.Also, he said that they were informed in Utthal that a few officials from the federal government would come to negotiate with them. But the meeting did not happen.

As a doctor was busy putting a clean bandage around the foot blisters of Mama Qadeer, he informed that they were visited by members of rights groups, specifically, Zohra Yusuf of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). `We once again asked them to do something about us, to plead our case in the higher courts of Pakistan or to highlight it internationally,` he added.

For past few years, there has been a lack of trust between members of VOMBP and HRCP as the former thinks that the latter does not support them `when needed.

As a result of that, the figure on missing persons quoted by the HRCP is not considered `authentic` by families of the missing.

But a senior worker of HRCP, Abdul Hayee, said that the organisation was working under a lot of constraints in the insurgency-hit province. `Our Quetta chapter is under a lot of threat. Our members over there have to be very cautious while making inquiries about such cases, especially, in case of missing men,` he said.

Between 2010 and 2011, HRCP lost two of its workers.

Naeem Sabir was shot dead in Khuzdar, while another activist Siddique Eidu`s tortured body was found from Pasni.

He said that at present the total, registered figure, of missing men from the province stood at 550. It was gathered within past few years, after families from Balochistan and Karachi came forward and registered cases with the HRCP.

`Keeping in mind the fresh cases of abductions and bodles dumped in both areas, we asked the families to come forward and at least get the cases registered.

`It hasn`t happened until now as they (families) are scared of mentioning their exact residential addresses in the form,` he said.

HRCP chairperson Zohra Yusuf said that the case of missing persons, which was filed in Supreme Court in February 2007 by the HRCP, was recently asked to consult a judicial commission.

`The families are not so confident about the role of the judicial commission. It`s not that nothing is happening but it`s a long process, mostly because members of the security agency refuse to show up for the hearings or send a low ranking officer.

Yusuf said the HRCP was left asking the same questions as others at the end of the day.

`We are not as powerful as the army or the government to solve these issues. But we need to keep plodding on.

As visitors keep filling the camp outside KPC, Qadeer Baloch was seen looking at a paper, while the doctor beside him was now checking his blood pressure. `I have made up a list of issues I want to speak about at the seminar.

Let`s see what happens,` he added.