Accents
August 30, International Day of the Disappeared
August 30, today as I write this, is the International Day of the Disappeared, a day that should never have been placed in the calendar if only governments, heads of states, law enforcers of all shades – from high to low levels – have respect for human rights. If only the person was arrested properly, listened to, brought to court, convicted and punished accordingly – all the processes – but never, ever be consigned to the kingdom of nowhere…
August 30 is observed each year by Amnesty International and activists worldwide as the International Day of the Disappeared. Amnesty International defines an enforced disappearance as the detention of someone by the state or its agents, when the authorities deny that the victim is in custody or conceal what has happened to them. “Enforced disappearances have occurred across the world – in Sri Lanka, Russia, El Salvador, Morocco, Iraq, Thailand, Pakistan, Bosnia, Equatorial Guinea, Egypt and Argentina, to name a few. No one is immune; victims have included men, women and children.”
Amnesty International goes further: “You could be taken at any time, day or night. You might be at home, at work or traveling on the street. Your captors may be in uniform or civilian clothes. They forcibly take you away, giving no reason, producing no warrant. Your relatives desperately try to find you, going from one police station or army camp to the next. The officials deny having arrested you or knowing anything about your whereabouts or fate. You have become a victim of enforced disappearance.”
From the Center of Human Rights in Geneva: “Enforced and involuntary disappearance (EID) is deemed as one of the cruelest of human rights violations. It is a doubly paralyzing form of suffering: for the victims, frequently tortured and in constant fear for their lives, and for their family members, ignorant of the fate of their loved ones, their emotions alternating between hope and despair, wondering and waiting, sometimes for years, for news that may never come.” May Wan and Tamara, daughters of disappeared Luisa Posa Dominado, and Rosemarie and DM, wife and son of disappeared Nilo Arado continue to wait and wonder since the two disappeared on April 12, 2007.
Karapatan, an alliance of human rights organization, has this report: “Luisa Posa-Dominado and Nilo Arado were abducted by unidentified military elements in Iloilo. A green Mitsubishi van overtook the pick-up truck they were riding and forced it off the road. Dominado was dragged into the green van while Arado into a maroon Starex sedan. Also with the victims was Jose Ely Garachico, vice chairperson of Panay Alliance–Karapatan, who survived a gunshot wound which passed through his neck and hit his left lung. Arado was the chairperson of Bayan-Panay while Dominado is the regional spokesperson of Selda, an organization of former political prisoners. They are both still missing.”
Karapatan reports that cases of enforced disappearances or desaparecidos accelerated in 2004-2005 averaging at two cases a month. It peaked in 2006, tripling the average to six incidents a month or more than once a week. From the time Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo became president until Dec. 31, 2009, there are a total of 205 missing, 31 of them women and 68 belonging to cause-oriented organizations.
Amnesty International (AI) distinguishes a case of “disappearance” from that of a missing person, a kidnapping, an incomunicado detention, or an extra-judicial execution by the following: (1) There are reasonable grounds to believe that a person (the victim) has been taken into custody by the authorities or their agent. (2) The authorities deny that the victim is in their custody or the custody of their agent. (3) There are reasonable grounds to disbelieve that denial.
Denial of accountability makes a “disappearance” unique among human rights violations. “By its very nature,” states AI, “a ‘disappearance’ clouds the identity of its perpetrator. If there is no prisoner, no body, no victim, then presumably no one can be accused of having done anything.” But where there is a consistent pattern of grave human rights violations, AI believes blame may be attributed to the government concerned – if only by implication under the principle that a state’s primary responsibility is to protect the safety of its citizens. (Underscoring mine).
How deep is the emotional trauma caused by the “disappeared” on their families? Studies made by psychiatrists, psychologists, and doctors revealed “a prolonged state of crisis, in which the anguish and pain caused by the absence of a loved one continues indefinitely. It is the crushing reality of loss coupled with the unreality of death that afflicts the families of those who have “disappeared.” The result is a form of mental torture brought about by either the suspension of bereavement or the feeling of helplessness – and paralyzing uncertainty...”
Paralyzing uncertainty is absent in the case of my cousin Edmundo Rivera Legislador, a student leader at UP Iloilo, who was gunned down by the military, July 26, 1974. Anxiety vanished with the finality of his death. Mourning was complete and we his relatives have adjusted to the loss. To quote the psychologists, “Through mourning, one learns to adjust to the changes that must occur following a loss.” In the case of the families of the “disappeared,” the emotional trauma is not healed with the passage of time because no one knows what happened to the “disappeared.” The agony goes on…
If by the slimmest of chance Luisa and Nilo are still alive and held in custody, we their friends and relatives and the rest who are just as concerned are asking the authorities involved to release them and to give them a fair trial if the two were suspects of having committed a crime. We ask that their abductors be tried as well and meted out punishment accordingly.
Year after year, International Day after International Day, we will not stop demanding for closure to the case.
Email: lagoc@hargray.com
