Ignored plight of the families of ‘Disappeared’ persons

March 13, 2006
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By- Suvechha Adhikari

History repeats itself. The families of the disappeared have come to the streets once again demanding the publication of whereabouts of their loved ones, in a state of desperation and exhaustion.

Running from barracks, police posts to Human Right organizations, now these families are back on streets to pressurize the government to address their grievances.

“It’s been 4 years since we have frequently asked the government to provide us the whereabouts of our family members. But there is no response from their side. How long are we going to live in such a state of desperation,” says Shanta Bhandari, one of the founder of Association of families of people disappeared by the State and also the mother of Bipin Bhandari, who is disappeared since June 16, 2002.

I vividly recall the conversation I had with her and other family members of the disappeared whom I met during research in Nepal on issue concerning enforced disappearances.

Wives whose husbands have disappeared, fathers who are still in the process of locating their sons and siblings who are desperately waiting for their brothers to come home. The wait goes on, the hope lives on as the memories of their loved ones haunt them and the vengeance grows tougher towards the faceless phantom that authored these disappearances.

The state and the security forces have been time and again criticized for arbitrarily arresting people and disappearing them since the conflict started. Various Human Right organizations claimed that the cases of disappearances increased, considerably following the declaration of a state of emergency and deployment of the Royal Nepal Army in November 2001.

Amidst intense criticism from national and international community and pressure from families and relatives of the disappeared, there hasn’t been any considerable change in the behavior of state and security forces.

The demand to internationalize the issue, which has remained as a backburner, has been nothing but a debacle. Errors emanating from the state’s side surfaced out as they have always been reticent tackling the problems of disappearances with utter scrutiny and have constantly denied the claims of disappearances. Even the committee formed by the government to investigate the cases of disappearances, under the Home Ministry in August 2004 chaired by Joint Secretary Narayan Gopal Malego didn’t show any tangible results.

The commission was only provided answers to only a few cases of the disappeared and gave false hopes to the family members of others.

The primary demand of families of the disappeared has remained unchanged: “publicizing the whereabouts of their loved ones”. The anxiety and despair, authored by the diseased politics ransacking the lives of many more has made them ignorant about the fate of their loved ones, which indeed is their prime concern. However, their disrupted lives due to the disappearance of their loved ones cannot go unnoticed. The economic vulnerability and psychological consequences due to the disappearance cannot be neglected.

Most of the people disappeared being men, mostly the sole bread earner of the family; their disappearances have lead into material deprivation of the family. And most, the vulnerable here are children of these disappeared members. The lives of these little ones who barely know about the nascent, democracy devouring lives and property around them has been wrecked so much so that they are on the verge of dropping out from their schools.

The fear and insecurity of life, and sudden changes in their social and economic situation has also produced psychological effects on these families.

The social and economic marginalization of these families, their pain and suffering, the disintegration of fabric of their society and undermining of their relations between individuals in the community is not a matter that can be easily sidelined.

Unlike other conflict victims, they are debarred from both social and material assistance from the State. The State has explicitly recognized the Maoist victims as the victims of conflict and has introduced a compensation scheme. However, the loss the families of the disappeared have to undergo is unaccounted.

Though it is a duty of the State to produce itself as impartial machinery while assisting the victims of internal conflict, it has failed to do so when it came to families of the disappeared.

On the other hand, the international community, the donors and International Human Right organizations have only been effective in terms of pressurizing the government to bring about a halt in the phenomenon of disappearances that has become rampant, as the political instability has hiked up. They have acknowledged the problems explicitly, however no material and social assistance has been brought to the families considering them as the secondary victims.

It seems that this community hasn’t felt any obligation towards these families unlike other conflict victims. For them, the plight and infringement of the families of the disappeared happened to be the secondary issues.

Even the national/local Human Right organizations have failed to respond to the needs and plight of these families of the disappeared.

Few organizations, which are working on the issue of disappearances, have constrained their activities to providing assistance in locating the disappeared person and free legal service.

Though locating the loved ones and provision of legal support is inevitably the family’s primary need, these families are in need of material resources and profound social assistance than just the assurance and hope of return of person from these organizations.

As the country continues to toddle with its relevant “war for peace” policy, a sudden halt in cases of disappearance is not only difficult, but also sort of virtual. And it is amounted to the unwillingness and the lack of accountability of authorities that are supposed to look after the issues of disappearances and after effects.

It is acknowledged that even for national and local human right organization providing social and material assistance for the families of the disappeared, it is a massive task as the political antagonism has become hard to bridge the facet of the country. And also, there is need of immense human and material resources.

(Ms. Adhikari is a Masters level student of Gender and Development Studies at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand. This article is based on her research on families of enforced disappeared in Nepal between July-October, last year. Please send your comments to [email protected] or [email protected])

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