{"id":34458,"date":"2017-08-30T09:04:34","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T07:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/34458-agony-of-afghanistan-s-enforced-disappearances-families-of-victims-still-awaiting-the-truth.html"},"modified":"2017-08-30T09:04:34","modified_gmt":"2017-08-30T07:04:34","slug":"agony-of-afghanistan-s-enforced-disappearances-families-of-victims-still-awaiting-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/34458-agony-of-afghanistan-s-enforced-disappearances-families-of-victims-still-awaiting-the-truth.html","title":{"rendered":"Agony of Afghanistan\u2019s Enforced Disappearances, according to HRW"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

As the world marks International Day of the Disappeared on August 30, learning the fate of the tens of thousands of Afghans who have been victims of enforced disappearance over the past four decades seems ever more remote. For their family members, that failure is like a wound that has never healed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Four years ago, Mohammad Rahim\u2019s family finally held funeral services for him \u2013 34 years after Afghanistan\u2019s secret police took him away, never to be seen again. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The ceremony took place after Rahim\u2019s name finally appeared on a \u201cdeath list\u201d of people detained and ordered executed in 1978-79. The list is the only official confirmation of the victims\u2019 fate the families have ever received.\u00a0Five thousand names<\/a>\u00a0are on it \u2013 a fraction of those who \u201cdisappeared\u201d after the communist People\u2019s Democratic Party of Afghanistan seized power, launching a civil war that, with changes in the warring factions, continues today.<\/p>\n

A literature student in Paktia province, Rahim was caught up in a purge of teachers, civil servants, religious leaders, and tribal elders accused of \u201canti-revolutionary\u201d sympathies.\u00a0More than 27,000 people disappeared in Kabul alone<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and possibly 100,000 across the country \u2013 in just 20 months. Most were buried in mass graves that have yet to be exhumed.<\/p>\n

The state prosecutor for the Netherlands<\/a>\u00a0obtained the \u201cdeath list\u201d as evidence against Amanullah Osman, an Afghan intelligence official who had sought asylum in the Netherlands in 1993, but the investigation\u00a0came to an abrupt end<\/a>\u00a0when Osman died in 2012.\u00a0Dutch authorities said<\/a>\u00a0they published the list to \u201cbring closure to the tormenting uncertainty that thousands of Afghan relatives have lived in for years.\u201d A\u00a0Facebook page<\/a>, \u201c5,000 Victims,\u201d serves as a memorial for this and other atrocities of the war; recent postings concern Hezb-i Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, accused of\u00a0abducting and secretly killing<\/a>Afghan intellectuals, journalists, and others in the 1980s and 90s.<\/p>\n

But enforced disappearances continue to this day. A\u00a0recent United Nations report on torture<\/a>\u00a0in Afghanistan cites numerous accounts of people vanishing after being taken into custody by the police in Kandahar in 2015 and 2016.<\/p>\n

The Afghan government should promptly ratify the\u00a0International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, and implement its provisions.\u00a0<\/a>It should work with UN and other agencies to uncover the fate of those disappeared, however long ago. Where possible, the authorities should prosecute those responsible. For the sake of those families still awaiting answers, the government should do all it can to uncover the truth.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This article was previously published by Human Rights Watch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the world marks International Day of the Disappeared on August 30, learning the fate of the tens of thousands of Afghans who have been victims of enforced disappearance over the past four decades seems ever more remote. For their family members, that failure is like a wound that has never healed. Four years ago, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":63718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[],"ji_location":[2571],"class_list":["post-34458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","ji_location-afghanistan"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAgony of Afghanistan\u2019s Enforced Disappearances, according to HRW - JusticeInfo.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/34458-agony-of-afghanistan-s-enforced-disappearances-families-of-victims-still-awaiting-the-truth.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Agony of Afghanistan\u2019s Enforced Disappearances, according to HRW\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As the world marks International Day of the Disappeared on August 30, learning the fate of the tens of thousands of Afghans who have been victims of enforced disappearance over the past four decades seems ever more remote. 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