On the occasion of its tenth anniversary, AFAD
published its third volume, in an attempt to illustrate and analyze the
political circumstances under which enforced disappearances in Asia have
been committed and in which way AFAD as well as its member-organizations
have responded to this serious human rights crime. It describes the
obstacles and challenges family members have had to face, not only in
their demand to know the truth about the fate of their loved ones, but
also in their daily struggle to survive amidst a hostile political
environment, economic hardship and emotional trauma. Thus, this book
stands out as an important contribution to the documentation and
denunciation of one of the cruellest human rights violations of our times.
In
her introduction, AFAD Secretary General Mary Aileen Bacalso emphasizes
the varying political contexts in which enforced disappearances in Asia
have been committed, be it under military dictatorships,
counter-insurgency campaigns, internal armed conflicts or, as a more
recent phenomenon, the so-called “global war against terrorism.”
Nonetheless, the reader discovers astonishing similarities with respect to
the ways repression of opponents and cruelties against human beings are
carried out. These similarities are not restricted to Asia but also in the
rest of the world.
Perhaps more importantly, it is stressed that AFAD
always seeks to project the phenomenon of enforced or involuntary
disappearances from the families’ perspective. It is they who are the
living witnesses of this grave crime and who have raised their voices in
order to denounce it by demanding truth, justice, and reparation. As the
Honorable Santiago Corcuera, chairperson of the UN Working Group on
Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (UNWGEID) points out in the book’s
epilogue, both nongovernmental and supra-state human rights bodies rely to
a great extent to the information provided by families’ associations and
human rights organizations that work closely with them. Otherwise, it
would be even more difficult to render account on cases of enforced
disappearances which, due to their particular characteristics, are often
complicated to prove.
As a federation that was predominantly founded by
directly affected families, AFAD has demonstrated to the world that
enforced disappearance is not solely a Latin American phenomenon. The
political significance of this contribution should not be underestimated.
As the book also illustrates, in most countries AFAD members are clearly
regarded as a risk by their respective governments as they have been
threatened, harassed and persecuted. In 2004, AFAD’s chairperson Munir
Said Thalib from Indonesia was killed. As to this date of writing, the
lawyer and front figure of AFAD memberorganization, the Association of
Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), in Kashmir, India, Parvez Imroz,
has just been released after having been beaten up brutally and detained
by Indian police forces. The authors of the book pay tribute to those who
have died because of their tireless efforts to make perpetrators
accountable for the grave human rights crimes committed.
A Peculiar Journey through Asia: Country Situations
The major part of the book is comprised by country
chapters. Like a mosaic, different bits and pieces of the Asian continent
are put side by side, in the course of reading they take shape and render
clear account to the reader about the overall human rights situation in
many parts of Asia, as well as the states’ insufficient fulfillment of
international human rights standards. The political and socio economic
contexts in which enforced disappearances and other grave human rights
crimes have been committed provide the framework for an in-depth analysis
of the modes and reasons for political repression carried out by a variety
of different groups of actors. The military, however, in each and every
case, stands out as the main responsible perpetrator of enforced
disappearances, as well as for the lack of accountability observable in
every country, be it in conflict or post-conflict situations. Likewise,
the description of initiatives for the emergence of families’ associations
and their different ways of organizing and struggling for truth and
justice show many similarities but also differences as to how families
have had to respond to different political circumstances that have changed
over the years. In the following, an overview of the country analyses will
be given.
In
China, the most notorious is the case of students who were killed and were
made to disappear during and after the massacre at Tiananmen Square in
Beijing on 4 June, 1989. The dramatic events are described as far as the
facts are known in spite of the Chinese political leadership’s tight
control on information about human rights violations and political
dissidence. Restricted by the same difficulty, the struggle of the
Tiananmen Mothers, AFAD member since 2002, is accounted for even though
the Federation has lost track of them since 2004 when the Mothers
submitted cases to the UNWGEID and were subsequently targeted by Chinese
authorities. More recent cases of disappearances in China are Falun Gong
practitioners and Tibetan demonstrators.
The second case is that of Jammu and Kashmir province
in India which for decades has suffered from armed struggle for
independence. Kashmir is circumscribed as a “pained paradise”: Since the
end of the 1980s, around 8,000 persons have disappeared, the majority of
them being non-combatants. The members of the Association of Parents of
Disappeared Persons (APDP), established in 1994 and one of AFAD’s founding
members, have been subjected to countless threats and, as mentioned above,
even attacks on their lives. The association’s report about unmarked mass
graves, released earlier this year, makes an effective protection of its
members’ lives an even more urgent matter.
The third chapter illustrates the length of the journey
toward the end of disappearances: Indonesia’s most notorious period of
massive enforced disappearances was during the Suharto dictatorship
(1966-98), with an estimated number of 1,500 cases. But since the end of
his rule, despite some halfhearted efforts by succeeding governments, no
one has been held accountable for this or other grave human rights crimes.
The tireless struggle of AFAD member organizations, IKOHI (Ikatan
Keluarga Orang Hilang Indonesia) and KontraS (Commission for the
Disappeared and the Victims of Violence) for truth and justice
highlights the fragile situation in a country which, due to rampant
impunity and huge conflict potential, still gives fertile ground for a
resurgence of human rights violations.
A separate chapter depicts minutely the murder of Munir
Said Thalib, founder of KontraS, and AFAD chairperson at the time
of his death. He was poisoned on a Garuda flight to Amsterdam on 7
September 2004, but due to slow and ineffective investigations as well as
to obstacles of political nature, the active involvement if not authorship
of Indonesia’s secret service (BIN) has not yet been proven completely.
Munir’s murder remains unresolved, only the material author has so far
been indicted while the masterminds behind still enjoy absolute impunity.
Munir’s death has been a terrible blow for KontraS, IKOHI,
the Indonesian human rights community and AFAD, but, as it is pointed out,
he has become the symbol of impunity for human rights crimes in Indonesia
and elsewhere in Asia. This fuels the human rights community’s demands for
justice and for the protection of human rights defenders.
The
uncertainty if there is hope for the clarification of the fate of the
hundreds of disappeared persons in Nepal, is depicted in the fourth
chapter. The country, topping the number of disappearance cases worldwide
just a few years ago, currently is going through its most significant
process of political transformation. But, as it is emphasized elsewhere in
the book, peace and reconciliation cannot be a substitute for truth,
justice and reparation for the victims and their families. Families expect
from the new government that the truth about the fate of the disappeared
be revealed and that those responsible be held accountable. AFAD
member-organization, Advocacy Forum is at the forefront of Nepal’s human
rights community to demand accountability, actively supporting victims’
families and promoting their organization.
In the fifth chapter, Pakistan’s thorny path through
succeeding military dictatorships is illustrated, as well as their brutal
ways of eliminating political opponents. One of them has been the practice
of enforced disappearances. The political system, however, grants total
impunity to perpetrators, the majority of whom are among the police and
intelligence services. The Pakistani government’s close collaboration with
the U.S. in the so-called “war on terror” has created a new kind of
enforced disappearance, i.e. the detention of alleged terror suspects
whose fate remains unknown. The Truth and Justice Commission, AFAD
member-organization since 2003, has led the struggle of demanding the
clarification of the fate of the disappeared. Its work has been severely
hampered by political repression and restrictions on civil liberties.
The sixth chapter about the Philippines takes us again
a long way into the past: The phenomenon of enforced disappearances in
this country is mainly associated with the Marcos regime, but subsequent
government’s incapacity to tackle human rights crimes and a new increase
of disappearances are also highlighted. The organization, the Families of
the Victims of Involuntary Disappearance (FIND) was among Asia’s first
families’ associations and is an AFAD founding member. Through the efforts
of FIND and other human rights organizations despite ongoing political
turmoil, international attention is paid on enforced disappearances in the
country. Another particular group of families, Claimants 1081, joined AFAD
in 2006. It is a group of victims of human rights violations of the Marcos
dictatorship who filed a class suit against the Marcoses before the
Federal Court of Hawaii. Many of its members are families of the
disappeared. Karapatan, another human rights organization, also highly
contributed data and statistics on disappearance cases to this chapter.
Sri
Lanka is the country with most disappearance cases in Asia, with an
estimated 60,000 victims. Most persons disappeared during the so-called
“terror years” between 1984 and 1994. The seventh chapter tries to
transmit the unimaginable dimension of brutal repression in this country
in which unfortunately, in recent years, due to political unrest because
of the unresolved conflict between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamils,
human rights violations have increased again. Thousands of disappearance
cases have been documented, thanks to the tireless struggle of the
Organization of Parents and Family Members of the Disappeared (OPFMD),
also one of AFAD’s founding members.
Thailand, eighth and last case analyzed in the book,
has experienced several waves of disappearances in different parts of the
country, starting with the Thammasat University Massacre in the 1970s, and
continuing with the Black May of 1992 and disappearances in the Southern
provinces where ethnic Malay Muslims have taken up arms against Thai
dominance and oppression. A prominent case is cited: The disappearance of
human rights lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit in 2004. The Relatives’ Committee
of the May 1992 Heroes and the Working Group for Justice and Peace in the
South, both AFAD member-organizations, have taken the initiative to demand
truth and justice from the Thai government.
Asia’s Most Serious
Human Rights Problem: Impunity
“Impunity does not merely signify that the perpetrators are
unaccountable and enjoying freedom, but also entails consequences that
they will continue to commit human rights violations in the future
including the practice of enforced disappearances,” AFAD chairperson
Mugiyanto writes in the foreword of the book, continuing that Asia is
still a safe haven for perpetrators and repressors. He stresses that this
may represent a particular view of those who have experienced directly
what impunity means, which is not necessarily shared by others on whose
opinion reconciliation and sustainable peace can only be achieved by
forgetting about the past.
This is both a clear and a strong message directed not
only to those who have an immediate interest in evading accountability,
but also to those who benevolently engage in supporting people in conflict
areas. This message should be taken seriously since it corresponds not
merely to the personal desires of those affected most, i.e. victims’
families and survivors of atrocities. The book’s country chapters bear
witness in which ways the problem of impunity exacerbates conflict and
impedes peaceful political transformation and democratization. They
illustrate different apparent post-conflict situations, like in Sri Lanka,
Indonesia and the Philippines, where unresolved past human rights crimes
sow new conflict and, consequently, more human rights violations.
Likewise, the Nepal chapter renders account of the urgent necessity to
address issues of the most recent past in order to construct a peaceful
society.
Last but not the least, the reader learns that
persisting impunity, with former perpetrators remaining in power
positions, represents a dangerous terrain for human rights defenders.
Because of impunity in Indonesia, Munir had to die and other AFAD
member-organizations have been subjected to threats, persecution and even
physical attacks on their lives. What is born out of the desire to know
the truth about the fate of a beloved family member becomes a threat for
those who stand behind these aberrant crimes. Thus, families of the
disappeared have to be considered as human rights defenders whose lives
have to be protected and whose legitimate work has to be supported. This
need is exacerbated by the persisting difficulties to document cases of
enforced disappearances. The statistics reproduced in the book, in
comparison with estimations concerning the actual numbers of victims in
each country, implicitly transmit an outcry for a more dedicated support
to the task of tracing the fate of the disappeared.
AFAD’s Decade of Journey
The last chapter of “Reclaiming Stolen Lives” rounds off the decade-long
journey of the Federation by recounting AFAD’s birth as well as its
activities at the international level. This review provides, among many
others, a very clear impression of the importance of international
solidarity among the families which is not precisely the same as the
well-established world-wide network of the non- overnmental human rights
community. AFAD was conceptualised during one of the first international
meetings of families’ organizations from several parts of the world in
1997. It is true that AFAD’s first member-organizations learned from the
experiences of the Latin American Federation of Associations of Families
of Disappeared-Detainees (FEDEFAM) which has been existing since
1981, but above all, it was founded and prospered because of the dire need
to address the problem of enforced disappearances in Asia. Nevertheless,
joining hands with families from other parts of the world and sharing the
traumatic experience of having lost a loved one without getting the right
to know what exactly happened to him or her, implies a crucial step for
families to convert pain into strength, and silence into speaking truth to
power.
These
encounters underline the need for families to empower themselves through
experience- xchange. AFAD has for several years organized rehabilitation
workshops for members which have not only enhanced their capacity to
tackle the multiple difficulties and challenges each and everyone faces,
but also emphasize AFAD’s presence in member- countries by giving
individual members a sense of belongingness to a continent-wide federation
as well as to an international solidarity network. An outstanding example
for the effect of families’ solidarity and collaboration across borders is
the existence of the UN Convention for the Protection of All Persons from
Enforced Disappearance which was approved by the UN General Assembly on 20
December 2006. If it were not for the tireless efforts of AFAD, FEDEFAM
and other families’ associations across the world, the Convention would
not have seen the light of the day. Unfortunately, there have been only
few Asian states that have appreciated this new normative instrument
through a signature, but none of them has ratified it so far. The fact
that Asia is the only part of the world which lacks a regional human
rights mechanism as well as the fact that Asia currently shows the highest
disappearance record make a firm commitment to the Convention all the more
urgent and necessary.
AFAD has many reasons to take a proud look back on its decade-long past,
but also many challenges lie ahead, including uncertainties as to which
paths political development in member- ountries will take. One thing,
however, should not be taken for granted: Both in Asia and elsewhere, AFAD
will continue to have a strong voice for the years to come.
