Disappeared: Silencing Pakistan’s activists
January 21, 2017
Rights groups say blasphemy allegations against disappeared activists aim to silent dissent for good.
Islamabad, Pakistan – On the afternoon of January 7, Ahmed Raza Naseer was sitting with his brother at their shop in a small village just outside the central Pakistani town of Nankana Sahib, when a nondescript man holding a mobile phone to his ear walked in.
He spent some time looking at their wares – mobile phones, mostly – before asking the brothers their names. After they answered, he asked which of them used a particular mobile phone number.
When Ahmed replied that he did, he was told to stand up. The 27-year-old struggled to his feet – he has been afflicted with polio in his right leg since he was a boy.
“The man tells him to take his phone and come and sit in the car outside, where a sahab [important man] is sitting who wants to ask you some questions,” his younger brother Tahir, who was ordered to stay inside, told Al Jazeera.
That was the last time his family saw Ahmed.
Naseer was the fourth person to disappear within a matter of days across Pakistan’s Punjab province. On January 4, Waqas Goraya, a Netherlands-based student, and Asim Saeed, a Singapore-based IT manager, were abducted in the eastern city of Lahore. On January 6, Salman Haider, a poet, activist and lecturer was abducted near his home in the capital, Islamabad. On January 7, activist Samar Abbas went missing while on a visit to the capital, too, bringing the total to five.
