- Category: Press Releases
Seoul, South Korea - The AFAD Secretary-General, Mary Aileen Diez-Bacalso called on the South Korean government to sign and ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in a conference held in Seoul, South Korea, entitled: International Conference on Enforced Disappearances, Solidarity, Strategies and Solutions.
The conference was opened with a moving video on the Korean Air flight YS-11, when the plane was hijacked by North Korean agents in 1969. 11 victims are still remaining in North Korea. In total, more than 500 cases of enforced disappearances against South Korean citizens have been committed by the North Korean Government.
- Category: Statements
Sixty-five years ago, 48 member countries of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), recognizing “the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
The UDHR inspired many human rights activists and defenders around the world to fight for their human rights. One of such great legends was the revered Nelson Mandela, whose recent death brought back memories of his anti-apartheid struggle and his 27 years of imprisonment. His and the struggles of many women, men, girls and boys who were or have been human rights defenders before us further defined and sharpened the various aspects of human rights resulting in the crafting of specific human rights treaties and declarations.
- Category: Statements
“The recent rejection of the bail application of Mr. ASM Nasirrudin Elan on charges similar to those filed against its recently released Secretary, Mr. Adilur Rhaman Khan only means that Odhikar is effective in its human rights reports because it unmasks the government’s false claim of complying with its human rights obligations,” AFAD Chair Mugiyanto said in a statement.
Mugiyanto recalled that it was only last August when Mr. Khan was arbitrarily arrested in his home and jailed, only to be released on temporary bail due to increased international pressure. “Now, we have to reach out for international support again for Mr. Elan and this will bring more attention to the worsening human rights situation in the country,” he further said.
- Category: News
HUMAN rights activist Mary Aileen D. Bacalso, secretary-general of the Asian Federation against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), is this year’s awardee of the Emilio Mignone International Human Rights Prize.
Bacalso said she was informed Thursday by the embassy of Argentina in the Philippines of the award “in recognition of her work against enforced disappearance in Asia and the world.”
Bacalso will travel to Buenos Aires on Dec. 10 to receive her award in a ceremony to be attended by Argentinian government officials. Aside from her funded travel to Argentina and a plaque, Aileen will also have speaking engagements in different organizations.
Bacalso said “I will be honored to receive this prestigious award soon which will be given not only to me but also to the disappeared and their loved ones and the rest among us in this bigger global movement against enforced disappearances. Let this be an important victory for the cause of the disappeared and their families in the Philippines, in Asia, in Latin America and in the rest of the world.”
- Category: Statements
All Souls’ Day is a time to remember and pay our respects to our dearly departed loved ones by visiting their graves, lighting up candles on their tombs, offering them flowers and prayers and above all, reflecting on their memories.
For the families whose loved ones were made to disappear by their own governments, remembering the disappeared is a painful and torturous ordeal. They have no graves to visit, no tombs to light candles and no place to offer flowers. Even silence is an elusive desire to pray as the cry of their disappeared loved ones for truth and justice occupies their memories.
- Category: Statements
On the 23rd anniversary of the Day of Disappearances at the Monument of the Disappeared in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the Secretary-General of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), Mary Aileen Bacalso, calls on the families of the disappeared to “keep the faith and persist in the struggle for justice of their loved ones.”
Ms. Bacalso lauds the women, men and children who are gathered today at the Monument of the Disappeared for their steadfastness to seek justice even under an increasingly repressive government. “We know how difficult your situation is, because you are confronted not only with the economic and psycho-emotional effects of the disappearance of your loved ones, but also the increasing repression of human rights under the present Rajapaksa government. making you vulnerable to arrest, detention and also enforced disappearance in the course of finding justice,” Ms. Bacalso adds.
- Category: Statements
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVjZDjTJYrM
Shot by: Candy Diez
Edited by: Mark King Baco
- Category: Statements
Families of victims of enforced disappearances, through the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) laud the Indonesian Parliament for the current deliberations towards ratifying the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (Convention).
"Now that the Convention is being deliberated in the Parliament, I hope that it will not take a long time, because it was even the Parliament that recommended the government in September 2009 to ratify the Convention as soon as possible. The ratification of the Convention will provide legal protection for every citizen from heinous crimes of enforced disappearances in the future," Mugiyanto, the Chairperson of AFAD and IKOHI (an organization of survivors and families of victims), himself a survivor of disappearances in Indonesia in 1998 says.