Fighting for Asia's disappeared persons

AFAD Secretary General Mary Aileen D. Bacalso has been fighting with Asian governments to stop enforced disappearances for a long time.

She told Deutsche Welle in Bonn that to make the fight more effective, a number of organizations from different Asian countries had come together and formed the AFAD.

"The work that we are doing is to coordinate efforts, facilitate joint efforts to combat enforced disappearances and to lobby for the enactment of domestic laws that criminalize enforced disappearances."

Asia has a bad track record

Bacalso also said that although Asia has one of the worst records for enforced disappearances, it is still difficult for her federation to make itself heard.

It is sometimes even seen as a nuisance, she explained. "It's very difficult if we deal with governments because these cases are perpetrated by agents of the state. More often than not, governments are defensive."

Not being able to work with the police to investigate cases of disappeared persons is one drawback, but organzations sometimes encounter worse.

"Our council member in Kashmir has been threatened and his house was bombed last year after they presented the first stage of the report on buried evidence. His life is in danger.

"In 2004, our former chairperson, Munir, was travelling to the Netherlands from Indonesia. He was poisoned by arsenic on board and died before arriving. These are some examples of our leaders being intimidated, harassed, and threatened because of their work."

Banned in China

The organization is banned from working in some countries, for example in China, where the group "Tiananmen Mothers" claims there were over 4,000 enforced disappearances during the Tiananmen Massacre alone.

"We used to have a member in China," Bacalso explained. "For security reasons, they could not continue their membership with us. China was the most difficult government during the negotiation process. It wanted to defy the Commission of Enforced Disappearances because of so-called national security. This is the reason why people disappear."

Convention against Enforced Disappearances

The AFAD, which is partly funded by European development agencies, has had to progress by small steps. Its largest success is the Convention against Enforced Disappearances, which was drawn up over two decades ago.

"It was initiated by the Latin American Federation of Associations of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees. Then the process evolved in the United Nations. It was not easy because many governments wanted to say 'it's a Latin American phenomenon, its not happening in our countries.'

"But that's not true. Our presence and that of other representatives in other regions of the world convinced these governments that an international treaty against enforced disappearances was needed."

18 countries have ratified the convention so far but it cannot enter into full force until at least two more have ratified it. Bacalso has called on governments to ratify it without delay because, she says, "this is an important global issue that needs a global response".

Author: Sarah Berning
Editor: Anne Thomas