an omnipresent instrument of terror against human rights under the impunity of the State

Amnesty remembers the victims of these crimes, spread across all continents

Aug. 28 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Next Tuesday, August 30, the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances is commemorated, a crime against humanity that consists of the illegal and indefinite deprivation of liberty of individuals by agents of the State or who act with the approval of the authorities, generally linked to torture and extrajudicial murder, with the added suffering of the victims’ relatives, who will probably never know the whereabouts of their loved ones.

Countries from all corners of the planet have been accused of these practices by organizations that defend Human Rights, which try to vindicate the seriousness of these crimes and denounce the impunity of their aggressors, who rarely end up answering to the Justice.

In its commemoration of this day, Amnesty compiles in a report the most outstanding cases of recent years, beginning with one that has once again acquired special relevance in recent weeks: the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa (Mexico) in 2014, considered finally as a “state crime” that has led to the arrest of dozens of people, including former attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam for “the crimes of forced disappearance, torture and against the administration of justice.”

Forced disappearance is a crime that knows no borders, from Qatar to the Palestinian Authority passing through Turkmenistan, nor genders, as evidenced by the 12,984 women disappeared in Peru in 2021, nor sides in conflict, as evidenced by the presence on the list of Amnesty from countries such as Syria, Yemen, Russia or Ukraine, whose respective authorities are accused of the disappearance of dozens of people in Chechnya or in the Ukrainian region of Donbas, from 2014 to 2016.

Amnesty places special emphasis on the complexity of a crime conceived to instill pain in the victims, and terror and insecurity in their relatives and in society as a whole; a silent tool, with elusive figures, that multiplies the control of the authorities over a population convinced that they could be the next, erased from the collective memory.

ASIA

On the Asian continent, Amnesty takes advantage of the recent anniversary of the Taliban conquest of Afghanistan to recall that the fundamentalist movement has spent the last 12 months purging former officials of the ousted government, ideological rivals or political dissidents, exemplified in the case of the director from Herat Women’s Prison, Alia Azizi, unaccounted for since October 2021.

Amnesty also denounces the disappearances of members of the Uyghur minority in the “re-education camps” of the Chinese region of Xinjiang, or the case of the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, who has come to power without having been investigated for crimes against humanity. related to the disappearance of thousands of political dissidents in 1988, when he was head of the Judiciary.

The NGO does not forget cases such as those disappeared in Burma after the coup d’état in February last year, or the disappearances carried out by both the Yemeni government and the Huthi insurgency during the long and catastrophic war that has been ravaging the country since 2015. .

AFRICA

The African continent, explains Amnesty, presents examples such as Burundi, where there are more than 250 cases open before the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, or Eritrea where, according to the NGO, “the Eritrean authorities continue to subject hundreds of people to enforced disappearance”.

In Kenya, during the year 2021, the Police subjected 33 people to forced disappearance. Only 28 prosecutions of alleged perpetrators of these disappearances were initiated.

Libya, one of the epicenters of the global migration crisis, is one of the most highlighted cases by Amnesty. “Both state and non-state actors continue to commit countless human rights violations against refugees and migrants,” says the NGO. During 2021, Libyan ships intercepted and returned 32,425 refugees and migrants, “many of whom were subjected to enforced disappearance after landing.”

Mozambique, Egypt, Niger, Uganda or Nigeria, whose secret police was accused of the unsolved disappearances of at least 200 people, are part of Amnesty’s African list, which highlights, however, the positive case of Sudan, whose government recently ratified the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons against Enforced Disappearances.

EUROPE

The European continent is by no means immune to these crimes, particularly with regard to the Balkan conflict, which continues to leave unhealed wounds. More than 1,600 people remain unaccounted for, the organization denounces, since the conflict between Serbia and Kosovo between 1998 and 1999.

In April 2021, Amnesty recalls, the President of Croatia warned that, before joining the European Union, Serbia should clarify the fate of the Croats who disappeared during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Only seven bodies were returned.

Other conflicts from the past continue today, in the case of Spain, as Amnesty also adds. The NGO, in this sense, recalls that United Nations experts have recommended to the Government and the Congress of Deputies that they reinforce some aspects of a bill presented last year to guarantee the right to truth, justice and reparation of the victims of the Civil War and the Franco regime.

LATIN AMERICA

Argentina joins the outstanding case of Mexico, where “impunity for forced disappearances continues.” Amnesty recalls, for example, the disappearance and death of Facundo Astudillo Castro, whose body was found 107 days after his disappearance was reported at the end of April 2020, in a country without “institutional public policies on the effective search for disappeared persons “.

Regarding Colombia, Amnesty indicates that, until May 27, 2021, the Working Group on Forced Disappearances had registered 775 forced disappearances in the framework of the National Strike, the protest that took place in Colombia that year, in which thousands of people participated. people peacefully, the vast majority. At year’s end the fate of 327 people remained unknown.

In Honduras, the whereabouts of four members of the Garífuna indigenous community belonging to the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH), who had been subjected to forced disappearance in July 2020, also remain unknown.

SUPERPOWER CRIMES

Amnesty also dedicates its corresponding sections to the United States and Russia. Of the US authorities, Amnesty recalls that so far no one has been brought to justice for the system of secret detention centers run by the CIA during the “war on terror”.

Furthermore, Amnesty regrets that “the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA acts of torture remained secret years after the few investigations into these crimes had been closed without charges being filed against anyone.”

On Russia, Amnesty denounces new reports of enforced disappearances, particularly in Chechnya, where the fate and whereabouts of Salman Tepsurkayev, moderator of the Telegram channel 1ADAT and critical of the authorities, remain unknown.

In October, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia was responsible for his unacknowledged and arbitrary detention and torture, as well as for “failing to effectively investigate such acts of torture”.