PAKISTAN: Journalist Zeenat Shahzadi disappeared while searching for missing Indian person

Dear Friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received updated information regarding the disappearance of 24-year-old journalist and activist Ms. Zeenat Shahzadi. After disappearing on her way to work in August 2015, all attempts to learn of her whereabouts have failed. Losing hope, her younger brother committed suicide on 24 March 2016.

Prior to her disappearance, Shahzadi was pursuing the safe recovery of a young Indian engineer arrested by Pakistani intelligence agencies in November 2012. Although he has recently been produced and sentenced by a military court for entering Pakistan illegally, still there is no news of Shahzadi’s whereabouts.

CASE NARRATIVE:

Based on information received from Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, F. India

( http://www.firstpost.com/india/missing-mumbai-techie-hamid-ansari-found-in-custody-of-pakistani-army-2585182.html), The Express Tribune (http://omnifeed.com/article/tribune.com.pk/story/1076159/disappearance-govt-urged-to-recover-missing-journalist/) + http://www.dawn.com/news/1226830 + NDTV (http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/family-of-missing-pak-journalist-who-helped-indian-seek-nawaz-sharifs-help-1291215), The Telegraph (http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160328/jsp/nation/story_76845.jsp#.Vv45B0dJejc)

On 19 August 2015, Ms. Zeenat Shahzadi, a journalist working for the Daily Nai Khabarand the Metro News television channel in Lahore, Punjab, disappeared while on her way to work in an auto-rickshaw. She was to appear before the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances on August 24, but before that she was disappeared by plain-clothed persons. Police registered an abduction case against “unknown men”. 

According to Zeenat’s older brother Latif, Zeenat had moved an application with the Supreme Court’s human rights cell on behalf of Fauzia Ansari, mother of Hamid Ansari, an engineer and MBA from Mumbai, India, reported missing in Pakistan since November 2012. Being a social worker and journalist, Shahzadi got interested in the case after reading stories about Mr. Ansari’s love story with a Pakistani girl from Kohat, Khyber Pakhtun Kha province (KPK) where the parents of the girl wanted to marry her in their family to help for his recovery. The girl had met Ansari through Facebook. In August 2013, Zeenat secured a special power of attorney from Fauzia, mother of Ansari and a college lecturer in Mumbai. Ansari’s father Nihal is a retired bank official.

According to the Secretary General of Pakistan Human Rights Commission, the then 28-year-old Indian techie had failed to obtain a visa to visit Pakistan. Ansari arrived in Kabul on 4 November 2012, and somehow reached Pakistan. He put up with an online friend till another friend booked him a hotel room in Kohat. On November 14 that year, the station house officer (SHO) of police took Ansari away and handed him over to an officer of a security agency, the rights group said. Attempts to register an FIR for his arrest and detention failed.

In the meantime, Shahzadi sent an application to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, which ordered the registration of an FIR in 2014. She also filed a habeas corpus plea before the Peshawar High Court. 
Latif said Shahzadi had received threats from unknown people who asked her not to pursue the case. “We too asked her not to put her life at risk, but she said she wanted to help Ansari out of humanity.”

On 11 January 2016, the Deputy Attorney General of Pakistan, Mussaratullah Khan informed the Peshawar High Court that the defence ministry had revealed that Ansari was in the custody of the army and was being court-martialed.  Hamid Ansari, Indian engineer

In the Month of February, a military court is said to have jailed Ansari for three years on the charges of illegally entering Pakistan and “spying”.

However, Zeenat’s whereabouts are still unknown. On March 24, her younger brother Saddam Hussain, a 12th grade student, committed suicide by hanging himself. He was very much depressed about her sister. His elder brother, Latif, says his father is still in shock and has stopped talking, and her mother remains in a coma. Shahzadi’s disappearance has been included among the missing person’s cases being probed by a joint investigation team (JIT). The JIT has said the case from her family will be heard in April, but no date has been announced.

Zeenat’s family has appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Chief of Army staff, General Raheel Sharif, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Minister of Interior and Chief Minister of Punjab province for her safe recovery. Her elder brother has also informed them about the suicide of his younger brother and the poor condition of his parents. Until now however, no one has replied to the appeal.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

The government as well as the judiciary has today fully realized the prevalence of enforced disappearances being perpetrated by the military and the intelligence services. These agencies are abducting hundreds, if not thousands of people from different parts of the country and making them disappear, particularly from Balochistan. The country’s higher judiciary, including the Supreme Court, has on many occasions found personnel from the Pakistan army and paramilitary to be involved in such abductions, enforced detentions and later disappearances. The courts have on numerous other occasions ordered the officers to be brought before the court, but these orders have never been respected by the stubborn government and its ally military apparatus. In one such case, the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered the arrest of an Army Brigadier on the charges of having been directly involved in an incident of enforced disappearance, but the order was never complied with.

The failure of the government in halting such acts of enforced disappearances and holding those  responsible accountable before the law, is  in violation to Pakistan’s international obligations. Government officials have been quoted as saying that because of the well-established military regime and close links with the armed forces, Pakistan’s government is unable to implement such laws on the ground. Moreover, on the pretext of combating terrorism, the government of Pakistan has accorded unlimited powers to law enforcement authorities through the Pakistan Protection Act of 2014. In September 2015, the government issued the Pakistan Protection Ordinance (PPO), without approval at the National Assembly. The Ordinance gave nine months for the law enforcement authorities to operate illegally/ in clandestine operations to implement the provisions of the said Act, without the knowledge of the Parliament. The Act further ensures that law enforcement authorities, be it the police, military or intelligence services, were provided with wide impunity even for prior actions with regard to incidents of enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killings during detention.

SUGGESTED ACTION:

Please write the letters to the authorities to immediately recover Miss Zeenat Shahzadi safely from the perpetrators, who are ostensibly from the military intelligence agencies. She must be produced before the court. An inquiry must be initiated for her abduction and disappearance.

Please also urge the authorities to prosecute those military officials who abducted Hamid Ansari and kept him in illegal detention for more than three and a half years without producing him before the court. The young Indian must be compensated.

The AHRC is writing a separate letter to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance, calling for its intervention into this matter.

To support this case, please click here: SEND APPEAL LETTER