The Impact of Enforced Disappearances on Women and Children in Some Asian Countries-FINAL

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The Impact of Enforced Disappearanceson Women and Children in Some Asian Countries:A Challenge to the Greater Society

By: Mary Aileen D. Bacalso,Secretary-General, Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearancesand Focal Person of the International Coalition Against Enforced DisappearancesDelivered at Udini City Theater, Udini, Italy

Introduction

Organizers of this event, honored guests, friends, ladies and gentlemen, goodevening. First and foremost, on behalf of the Asian Federation AgainstInvoluntary Disappearances (AFAD). I would like to express our profoundgratitude to Centro Balducci for inviting us here in your beautiful country tolearn from each other’s situations and to forge solidarity between and among allof us.Our organization, the AFAD, is a regional federation of human organizationsworking directly on the issue of enforced disappearances. Based in thePhilippines with 11 member-organizations from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor Leste, it was established on 4 June1998 in Manila, Philippines as an organizational response to the regional phenomenon of enforced disappearances in Asia. According to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, Asia is thecontinent which submitted the highest number of cases in recent years.Moreover, Asia is the region bereft of regional human rights mechanisms for protection. For which reason, there is a need for a solid federation thatconducts regional and international campaign, public information, lobby andsolidarity work in order to put to a stop this abominable crime of enforceddisappearance.Our Federation is also the focal point of the International Coalition AgainstEnforced Disappearances (ICAED), a coalition of 40 organizationscampaigning for signatures and ratification of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, an internationaltreaty that manifests the recognition by the international community of the

magnitude of the crime, the need for truth and justice and putting the crime of enforced disappearance to a full stop.

Enforced Disappearances In Some Asian Countries

Many years ago, during the administration of the late former President CorazonAquino, at the heart of the Philippines’ second urban center, Cebu City, myhusband, whom at that time I was married for exactly two months, was forciblytaken by seven armed men and was pushed inside a red car without a platenumber. I and the rest of our family searched for him in different militarycamps whose leaders all denied having him in their custody. After a week of agonizing search, we learned from a person unknown to us and who escapedfrom the military custody after three months of severe torture that my husbandwas with him in a secret detention center, later known to be owned by a militarygeneral. Knowing this information, we immediately informed the ArmedForces of the Philippines that we knew my husband’s whereabouts. Aware thatone of their detainees had escaped, the military was forced to release myhusband in a cemetery near his parents’ house. Physically and psychologicallytortured and deprived of food and water, my husband related how he wasmoved from one camp to another; forced to confess that he was a member of the National Democratic Front and the Communist Party of the Philippines andto identify the whereabouts of his alleged comrades. Fearful that the personwho escaped might testify, the Military Intelligence Group was forced torelease my husband in a cemetery near his parents’ house. This is a rare casewherein a disappeared person resurfaces alive because in most of the more than2,000 reported cases that have occurred from the dictatorial Marcos regime upto the present, the victims remain disappeared.According to the international treaty on enforced disappearances, enforceddisappearance is considered to be the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty committed by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of theState, followed by the refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or byconcealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which placessuch a person outside the protection of the law.The crime of enforced disappearance in our country and in many parts of theAsian continent continues to victimize men and women alike. The 2010 Reportof the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances statesthat 94 countries of the world have outstanding cases of enforceddisappearances. Most of the victims were men and the surviving mothers,

wives, daughters of the disappeared bear the brunt of the consequences of enforced disappearance.Enforced disappearances generally occur in the context of poverty and socialinjustice. Politically, Asian States are not the best in terms of respect for and promotion of human rights. In Southeast Asian countries, the ASEANIntergovernmental Commission on Human Rights is faced with skepticisms byhuman rights organizations because it lacks the necessary teeth to ensure notonly the promotion of human rights, but more importantly the protection of people from human rights violations. Some sections, however, state that it isimportant to push this body for it to function according to its reason for existence, but it requires persistence, perseverance and collective efforts.In the whole of Asia, there is still no single country that has a domestic law thatcriminalizes enforced disappearances. The anti-enforced disappearance draftlaws in Nepal and the Philippines have, after quite a long time, not yet beenenacted into law. Hence, cases of enforced disappearances, if filed in court, arenot considered as enforced disappearance but common crimes such as, for example, kidnapping, abduction, illegal arrest and detention, etc. If these billsin Nepal and the Philippines are enacted into law, taking into consideration thevastness of the Asian continent, these will be the first and only anti-enforceddisappearance laws in Asia.In as far as the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons fromEnforced Disappearance is concerned, only three Asian States have ratified it,namely, Japan, Kazakhstan and Iraq. Those who have signed are Indonesia,India, Laos and Azerbaijan. This utter lack of support to the Convention andthe absence of domestic laws criminalizing enforced disappearances are bestexplained in the fact that violations of human rights, especially enforceddisappearances are rampant in the region. The United Nations Working Groupon Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (UN WGEID) has confirmed thisreality in its annual reports of the last five years, at least. As a matter of fact,the Working Group has made several requests for official invitations fromAsian States to visit their countries, which, more often that not, did not receivea positive response or did not even receive any response at all.

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