'Disappearances'
Amnesty International defines 'disappeared persons' as those 'who have been taken into custody by agents of the state, yet whose whereabouts and fate are concealed, and whose custody is denied'. Amnesty puts the term 'disappeared person' between inverted commas in order to indicate that the person in question has not really disappeared, for there are persons who know the whereabouts of the disappeared person, but their knowledge is obscured by silence.
The FEDEFAM definition
A comparable definition is phrased by the FEDEFAM, the federation of Latin American committees of relatives. Compared to the Amnesty International definition, this definition puts a stronger emphasis on the disappearance being a violation of human rights, also for the remaining relatives: 'A disappearance may have occurred whenever acts of omissions are committed by government agents or individuals acting with governmental consent or complicity for purposes of intimidation and repression which violate basic human rights, with the intent to harm a person or his or her relatives, and in which public authorities conceal the fate of the victim and deny their own involvement.'
A crucial factor in both definitions is the involvement of the authorities. The authorities may be directly or indirectly responsible for a disappearance: directly, if they order the secret service, the armed forces or the police themselves to make a person disappear, indirectly, if it is not their order but they implicitly allow others to make someone disappear. In both cases the authorities deny their involvement. They always hide behind a wall of silence and do not co-operate on the provision of information or the conduct of research.
Relation to other violations of human rights
Disappearances are violations of human rights which are inextricably bound to other violations. A clear relation can for instance be observed in the case of imprisonment for political reasons. A disappearance may be a form of unacknowledged imprisonment. Most disappearances take place during the first days of a custody. Ways to prevent a disappearance are therefore primarily related to this first crucial period. A disappearance may also result in a political killing. However, the main difference is that in the case of a political killing a body is found. For relatives the uncertainty with regard to a disappearance is replaced by the certainty of death.
Click on this globe 
to return to my home page.
