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Statements of AFAD
Proceedings:
Articles on the Proceedings on the AFAD Leadership Training
Jan. 27 - 31, 2003, Philippines
AFAD Second Congress Resolutions
August 2003
Remembering Munir
AFAD Second Congress
August 26-30, 2003 in Bangkok, Thailand
AFAD’s Mid-Year Report
Ding Zilin's
Message To
Hong Kong
Again, The KONTRAS – IKOHI Office Was Attacked
“ If they are dead, tell us”!
My sons, where are they? |
A Decade of Journey
Towards A World Without Desaparecidos...
June 4, 2008 – Ten years ago, the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances was born in Manila, Philippines. It was a birth which would not have been necessary if it were not because of the phenomenon of enforced disappearances that escalated in the Asian region and which prompted its founders from the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Kashmir to form a core of the Federation.
The entire year of conception which started in May 1997 was realized not without difficulties brought about by intense repression and diversity in many respects. Yet these did not prevent the birth of the Federation. Such diversity instead served as a challenge to give birth to what it is now the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD).
The seeds sown by three core organizations sprouted and grew and turned into a mature federation of eight member-organizations from Kashmir, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, Nepal. The strength of their solidarity enabled them to collectively attain small and big victories in the search for the truth, in the struggle for justice, redress and reconstruction of the
desaparecidos' historical memory. Contributing to a large measure to this strength is the friendship and solidarity of our sisters and brothers from Latin America, Europe and Africa who, like us, suffer from this scourge of enforced disappearances.
From our small victories, AFAD, together with her counterparts from other regions, have achieved the major success of realizing the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance on the 20th of December 2006. A project first conceived by the Latin American Federation of Associations of Relatives of Disappeared-Detainees (FEDEFAM), this international treaty has been realized through the collective efforts of organizations of families of the disappeared from different continents and the support of legal experts from international organizations. AFAD, in her own modest way, brought the voice of the Asian families of the disappeared in the halls of the United Nations and destroyed the myth that enforced disappearance is solely a Latin American phenomenon of the past.
During AFAD's ten years of trials and triumphs, she withered internal and external threats. A major blow to the Federation was the murder of her former Chairperson, Munir who was treacherously poisoned by arsenic in a Garuda flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam via Singapore on September 7, 2004 He was killed two hours before arriving Amsterdam. Earlier on the same year on the 20th of April, AFAD's core group member, the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons lost the 29-year old Aasia Jeelani, one of Kashmir's best and brightest when she was killed in a landmine blast in an election monitoring duty in the north of the area.
Yet, these vicissitudes of time had not silenced the Federation. While she joins the international community in seeking justice for Munir and Aasia, AFAD remains steadfast amidst repression.
She continues to expose the grim reality of enforced disappearances in Asia through her advocacy work both at the national and international level….
She perseveres in its campaign for ratification of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance despite the Asian governments' apathy…
In her noble intention to empower the very source of her strength,
she painstakingly continues to sharpen her capacities for healing the traumatized families of victims of enforced disappearance through her psycho-social rehabilitation program…
Amidst this dark night of the disappeared, she attempts to unearth the skeletons inside the closet of the perpetrators of untruth and injustice especially in the war-torn area of Kashmir.
She links arms with families of the disappeared from different parts of the globe in her continuing journey towards a world without
desaparecidos.
AFAD's decade of journey towards a world without desaparecidos is definitely inadequate to win the fight against this malady. So long, winding and steep is this road towards a world without disappeared persons that it is less traveled… Nevertheless, linking arms with civil society, AFAD has to persevere so that the generations of tomorrow will not suffer from this crime against humanity never ever to be repeated in history. With courage and determination, she looks forward to the day when no family member of a desaparecido will ever ask again the same nagging question: Where Are You?
And the journey goes on…..
Signed:
| MUGIYANTO |
MARY AILEEN D. BACALSO |
| Chairperson |
Secretary-General |
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