Islamabad: The families of about 110 missing people in Pakistan, who believe their relatives have been abducted by government agencies and held in violation of law, have turned to the UN for help.
Holding banners and placards with anti-government slogans, hundreds of people demonstrated outside the UN office in Islamabad on Thursday and presented a memorandum urging the world body to help find their relatives.
The UN director in Pakistan promised protesters that he would make efforts to secure the return of their missing ones, The Daily Times reported on Friday.
The issue has acquired political overtones. Leading the protesters were Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarian (PPPP) leader Farhatullah Babar.
Addressing the gathering, Babar urged the government to release all the missing people immediately.
He said the authorities should inform the courts about the whereabouts of the missing people, so that legal action could be taken against them if they were involved in anti-state activities.
A demonstration was held outside the headquarters of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the powerful spy agency, last month.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz had said recently that most of those reported missing were in hiding and were actually on the run from law after committing some crime or the other.
There have been several reports of Islamist activists engaging in sectarian violence and going into hiding or crossing over to Afghanistan through a porous border.
He asked the relatives to follow 'protocol' in approaching the government. The interior ministry, he assured the media in Karachi, was looking into each case.
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