Washington Seminar Focuses
on “Disappearances in Pakistan”
Washington,
DC: The World Sindhi Institute (WSI) held a seminar on “Disappearances
in Pakistan” on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at the
National Press Club, Washington, DC.
The two-hour event was attended by representatives of prominent
human rights organizations in DC, such as Torture, Abolition
& Survivors Support Coalition; National Council of Negro
Women, INC.; Amnesty International; Project on Middle East
Democracy; Sindh Excellence Team; Pen Foundation and Sadhu
Vaswani Mission; leading media agencies, including Reuters,
ANI and Daily Times, etc.
Representatives from the business community, Pakistani students
in the US, the US State Department, and Embassy of Pakistan
in the USA, were also present. The event was marked by an
extremely lively and intuitive discussion by most of the
participants on the subject that has lately emerged as a
major issue in Pakistan.
The speakers included: Dr. Dorothy I. Height, Chair and
President Emerita, National Council of Negro Women, INC.;
Sr. Dianna Ortiz, Executive Director of TASSC (Torture,
Abolition & Survivors Support Coalition); T. Kumar,
Advocacy Director for Asia & Pacific, Amnesty International,
USA; Yohannes Tsehai, Senior Legislative Counsel, Office
of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (Co-Chairperson of Congressional
Pakistan Caucus); Munawar Laghari, Executive Director, The
World Sindhi Institute, Washington , DC; and Ms. Humaira
Rahman, Director WSI Canada, who also acted as the emcee.
She opened the proceedings by welcoming the guests and provided
a brief background to the issue of disappearances in Pakistan.
Dr. Dorothy I. Height; the keynote speaker, began by recalling
that her first visit to the continent of Asia was in 1952,
when she first landed in Karachi, Pakistan on her way to
India . Thus she still considers Pakistan to be her orientation
to that region. She reminded that in the history of nations,
there usually comes a time when they have to sacrifice and
pay the price for nation building, but hoped that history
does not have to repeat itself and that we learn from mistakes
committed in other parts of the world. Curtailing human
expression by force has never succeeded as a mechanism of
managing affairs of nations, as “Might is not always
Right”.
Sister Dianna Ortiz from ‘Torture, Abolition &
Survivors Support Coalition’ (TASSC) presented a forceful
and emotional account of the human aspect of the issue of
disappearance and torture in Argentina and Guatemala. She
gave the perspective of a torture survivor, which she herself
I,s and also narrated true stories of few torture victims
in her circle of friends. Her paper included the perspective
of the family of the victim, which she claimed, get as much
hurt and devastated as the victim him/herself.
Mr. Yohannes Tsehai represented Congresswoman Sheila Jackson
Lee, the co-chair of Pakistan Congressional Caucus at the
seminar. He apprised the audience about the work done at
the Congresswoman’s office regarding extra-judicial
arrests, which particularly got triggered at the time of
the disappearance of Dr. Safdar Sarki. He explained the
process through which he himself conducted investigation
on that particular case of disappearance: he carried out
a fact-finding exercise at various levels, including interviews
with Ambassador of Pakistan to the US. To his frustration
and despair, no one seems to know anything about the whereabouts
of Dr. Sarki, although there have been reports from independent
sources that few detainees who returned from detention centers
have personally met Dr. Sarki in one of the centers.
The last speaker was Mr. Munawar Laghari, Executive Director
of The World Sindhi Institute in Washington, DC. He gave
a a brief historical background to the practice of disappearances
and torture during repeated phases of martial law and dictatorial
regimes, with particular reference to the present regime.
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