The struggle for truth and justice always demands
patience and persistence. Truth and Justice need to be reclaimed from
those who stole them from us. Always, there is antagonism between the
fighters, represented by victims of human rights violations and the
thieves represented by state perpetrators. The success or failure of the
struggle for truth and justice depends on the dynamics of these opposing
forces in a given socio-political and economic context.
That we keep on publishing The Voice depicting our
cries, struggles, hopes and dreams is an expression of patience and
persistence. Each edition seems to be a repetition of previous issues - an
indication that not much has changed in the situation. Yet, with
conviction, victims believe that truth and justice shall prevail. As Taty
Almeida of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo – Linea Fundadora, in her
visit to Indonesia in April 2009, advised the Indonesian human rights
activists:
“Lose no hope. Keep fighting. Guard the memories.
We wear headscarves with the names of our disappeared children.
We also bring the pictures of our children.
In so doing, we will never forget them all the more.
We need to show that the disappeared are human beings;
they have names, faces and families.”
We have learned that persistence and perseverance have
brought concrete inroads in the struggle of the victims and their families
in all parts of the world. The International Convention for the Protection
of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance is, in itself, a result of
patience and perseverance – of an insistent knocking at the doors of the
United Nations that the crime against enforced disappearance deserves no
less than an international treaty with an independent monitoring body.
More recently, a sweet fruit of persistence and perseverance is the
sentence of former Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori to twenty-five years
in prison for the crimes against humanity that he committed.
Human rights violations are multi-faceted. Most Asian
countries commit ugly forms of these violations. While impunity remains
the order of the day, new cases of disappearances are recurring in huge
numbers. This reality has concerned The Honorable Santiago Corcuera,
Chairperson-Rapporteur of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or
Involuntary Disappearances (UNWGEID), who, in his message to the AFAD
during its 11th anniversary, stated:
“It is somewhat difficult for us to believe that more
than 60 years after the Nazi regime
in Europe and 30 years after the dirty wars in Latin America, the practice
of enforced disappearances is still so widely carried out. This is largely
because enforced
disappearances are indeed, a tool of social control, through terror, that
still pays off for
those who commit it.”
The worst reality is Sri Lanka, which has a very high
number of disappearances reported to the United Nations. The Human Rights
Watch 2008 World Report states that more than 1,500 people were reported
disappeared from 2005 to 2007, with more than 1,000 cases of enforced
disappearances that occurred in 2006 alone. The ugliest face is shown as
the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapakse, who was once a human rights
advocate and part of those who first organized the Organization of Parents
and Family Members of the Disappeared (OPFMD) in the early ‘90s, is now
considered as one of the world’s worst perpetrators of enforced
disappearances.
Stop enforced disappearances! Prosecute and punish the
perpetrators! Institute measures for reparation and redress! Institute
measures of prevention! All these are challenges to truth, justice,
accountability, peace and human dignity. They have to be concretely
confronted and realized if we are to destroy the culture of impunity
existing in most Asian countries.
The initiative to set up a Commission on Disappearances
in Nepal; the Bill Criminalizing Enforced Disappearances in the
Philippines; the establishment of a Commission on Disappearances in
Indonesia and Timor Leste as recommended by the joint Truth and Friendship
Commission (TFC); the openness of the Thai Government to be a party to the
Convention on Enforced Disappearances and some other initiatives by other
Asian countries – all these need to be closely monitored and followed-up
in order to finally garner concrete results in the struggle for truth,
justice, redress and the reconstruction of the desaparecidos’
historical memory so that this crime against humanity will never happen
again.
To realize our dreams, it is important to forge genuine
solidarity with similar formations of families of the desaparecidos
from other Asian countries and other continents and facilitate exchange of
experiences. The initiative that has been taken by our Indonesian members,
KontraS and IKOHI to invite the Madres de Plaza de Mayo
from Argentina and other leading victims from Thailand and Timor Leste is
an example par-excellence.
Just around the block is the commemoration of the
International Day of the Disappeared on 30 August. Especially on this day,
survivors and families and relatives of victims of enforced disappearances
from Asia, Africa, Middle-East, Euro-Mediterania, Central and Eastern
Europe and Latin America, more than ever, have to link arms with the rest
of civil society. More loudly and clearly, they have to echo their
collective voices against enforced disappearances – an apt way of honoring
all the desaparecidos of the world.
