AFAD Holds Congress in Sri Lanka, Scores Asian Governments’ Tepid Response to Enforced Disappearance
- Category: Statements
PRESS STATEMENT
17 December 2017
"As enforced disappearance respects no age, gender, race, creed, religion, or ideology and is committed in a borderless geography, AFAD consolidates its 14 member organizations across Asia in Bangladesh, Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste, and South Korea, and individual members in Laos and Switzerland. AFAD rallies its members to intensify their collective struggle to protect the absolute right not to be subjected to enforced disappearance in solidarity with all the peoples of Asia and the whole world."
- Category: Statements
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the enforced disappearance of Sombath Somphone, a staunch Lao civil society leader and community development activist who advocated for rural community-based development, especially among the youth. On the fateful evening of December 15, 2012, Sombath was abducted by policemen in Vientiane. Evidence obtained of Sombath’s abduction was caught on CCTV, where it showed that he was stopped and taken away on a pickup truck in front of the police station. Laotian authorities immediately denied any involvement in his abduction, which speaks volumes of the palpable culture of impunity in the country that is felt significantly to this day.
- Category: Statements
MESSAGE TO
THE ASIAN FEDERATION AGAINST INVOLUNTARY DISAPPEARANCES
Paris, 6 December 2017. The Lao Movement for Human Rights wishes success to the 6th Congress of The Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances.
Enforced disappearance is a violent and unacceptable violation to our basic rights and an infringement of international law. It is an odious crime that deeply and painfully affects the victim’s close ones who desperately seek information and find themselves in front of walls of denial, silence and indifference from the authorities. Too often, it involves the acquiescence or complicity of state officials and instills fear within civil society and human rights community in the country.
- Category: Statements
“Strengthening AFAD in its Second Decade of Struggle Towards a More Effective and Enduring Response to Enforced Disappearances in Asia”
In faith and solidarity, we, the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, extend our greeting to Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) and all its member organizations.
- Category: Statements
On this day, 69 years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at its third session, which was held at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, France. The adoption of this historic document marked a big leap in the struggle to defend and uphold human rights everywhere in the world.
AFAD CONDEMNS THE ASSASSINATION OF FR. MARCELINO PAEZ, DEMANDS TO BRING THE PERPETRATORS TO JUSTICE!
- Category: Statements
The Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), a regional human rights federation based in the Philippines, strongly condemns the brutal assassination of Fr. Marcelino Paez of the Catholic Diocese of San Jose in Nueva Ecija. Reports say that Fr. Paez was gunned down by unidentified men in Jaen, Nueva Ecija on Monday evening, 4 December 2017.
- Category: Statements
Violence against women is endemic in Bangladesh. Women and girls are subjected to domestic violence, rape, dowry and its related violence, acid violence, stalking and sexual harassment, etc. As per a 2015 survey of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, more than 80% of married women in the country are abused at least once in their married life, be it
physically, sexually, financially or emotionally.
- Category: Statements
Published: 00:05, Nov 20,2017 | Updated: 00:08, Nov 20,2017
POLICE investigators saying that they have found no evidence of any criminal gang being involved in the abduction of North South University teacher Mubashar Hasan Caesar, which took place on November 7, points to a pertinent, yet concerning issue. The teacher, who is an anti-extremism analyst, was picked up from in front of the IDB Building in the capital city 10 minutes after he had left the building. The incident, like any other incidents of enforced disappearance, caused a stir, with family, friends, rights and civic groups demanding that the government should find him out. He still remains untraced. But now that the police have fund no ‘criminal gang’ being involved in the incident, it is the duty of the government and the law enforcement agencies to find out who the people were that have criminally picked him up and where he has been kept. On the other front, Aniruddha Kumar Roy, a businessman and honorary consul of Belarus to Bangladesh, who went missing on August 27, has finally reached, or has been re hed, near his house at Gulshan in the capital. Aniruddha seems to be one of the few of about 402 people who, as rights group Odhikar puts it, disappeared between January 2009 and October 2017 and returned.