Pakistani "disappeared" a growing problem - group

ISLAMABAD, Feb 8 (Reuters) The disappearance of hundreds of Pakistani government opponents is one of the most pressing human rights problems facing the country, Pakistan's main rights group said on Thursday.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan outlined a broad range of problems in its annual report but said the growing issue of disappearances, with at least 400 cases since 2001, was one of its biggest concerns.

''In the past year, unfortunately, the overall situation has been so grim,'' the commission's secretary-general, former minister of law Iqbal Haider, told a news conference at which the group's annual report was released.

He said the armed forces, paramilitary forces and security agencies were involved in the abduction of Pakistani citizens, many of whom had ''suffered an extreme degree of torture''.

''Despite all the pleas, protests, demands from all sections of the public, including the (Supreme) Court of Pakistan, the vast majority, in the hundreds, of citizens -- their whereabouts are still unknown,'' he said.

Military and government spokesmen were not immediately available for comment.

The government, which has been facing a wave of militant and sectarian violence, denies violating human rights. It says it has arrested hundreds of suspected terrorists, many of them foreigners, since joining the US-led war on terrorism in 2001.

But commission chairwoman Asma Jahangir said most of the ''disappeared'' were not suspected militants but government opponents from the province of Baluchistan, where ethnic minority nationalists have been waging an insurgency for autonomy.

Jahangir said the commission was taking the issue to the Supreme Court.

''We are filing a petition, we have sent it today, to the Supreme Court ... on behalf of a number of people who have disappeared,'' she said.

''There are a large number who don't want to come forward and there are still, we believe, a large number of cases that we do not know about.

''We are hoping that this will encourage more people to speak up,'' she said.

Jahangir said the commission had cautiously welcomed government-backed amendments to Islamic laws on rape, introduced late last year, that made it easier for women to seek justice.

But she said, overall, Pakistan appeared to be a dysfunctional state where governance was not working.

''We see there is a dysfunctional state of affairs in the country, that nothing seems to be working. There seems to be a complete breakdown of institutions, a complete breakdown of law and order,'' she said.

REUTERS SSC KN1947