An enforced disappearance is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person with the support or acquiescence of a state followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate or whereabouts with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law. Often, forced disappearance implies murder whereby a victim is abducted, may be illegally detained, and is often tortured during interrogation, ultimately killed, and the body disposed of secretly. The party committing the murder has plausible deniability as there is no evidence of the victim's death.
Human rights in Myanmar under its military regime have long been regarded as among the worst in the world. In 2022, Freedom House rated Myanmar’s human rights at 9 out 100.
Rapid Action Battalion is an anti-crime and anti-terrorism unit of the Bangladesh Police. This elite force consists of members of the Bangladesh Army, Navy, Air Force, Police, Border Guard, and the Bangladesh Ansar. It was formed on 26 March 2004 as RAT, and commenced operations on 14 April 2004.
National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons was an Argentine organization created by President Raúl Alfonsín on 15 December 1983, shortly after his inauguration, to investigate the fate of the desaparecidos and other human rights violations performed during the military dictatorship known as the National Reorganization Process between 1976 and 1983.
Human rights in Thailand have long been a contentious issue. The country was among the first to sign the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and seemed committed to upholding its stipulations; in practice, however, those in power have often abused the human rights of the Thai nation with impunity. From 1977 to 1988, Amnesty International (AI) reported that there were whitewashed cases of more than one thousand alleged arbitrary detentions, fifty forced disappearances, and at least one hundred instances of torture and extrajudicial killings. In the years since then, AI demonstrated that little had changed, and Thailand's overall human rights record remained problematic. A 2019 HRW report expanded on AI's overview as it focuses specifically on the case of Thailand, as the newly government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha assumes power in mid-2019, Thailand's human rights record shows no signs of change.
Human rights in the Philippines are protected by the Constitution of the Philippines, to make sure that people in the Philippines are able to live peacefully and with dignity, safe from the abuse of any individuals or institutions, including the state.
Reynato Serrano Puno, KGCR is a Filipino jurist. He served as the 22nd chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines from December 8, 2007, by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo until his mandatory retirement on May 17, 2010. Puno had initially been appointed to the Supreme Court as an associate justice on June 28, 1993.
The Davao Death Squad (DDS) is a vigilante group in Davao City, Philippines. The group is alleged to have conducted summary executions of street children and individuals suspected of petty crimes and drug dealing. It has been estimated that the group is responsible for the killing or disappearance of between 1,020 and 1,040 people between 1998 and 2008. A 2009 report by the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (CHR) noted stonewalling by local police under the mayorship of Rodrigo Duterte while a leaked cable observed a lack of public outrage among Davao residents.
In the Philippines, amparo and habeas data are prerogative writs to supplement the inefficacy of the writ of habeas corpus. Amparo means 'protection,' while habeas data is 'access to information.' Both writs were conceived to solve the extensive Philippine extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances since 1999.
Tens of thousands of people have been disappeared in Sri Lanka since the 1980s. A 1999 study by the United Nations found that Sri Lanka had the second highest number of disappearances in the world and that 12,000 Sri Lankans had disappeared after being detained by the Sri Lankan security forces. A few years earlier the Sri Lankan government had estimated that 17,000 people had disappeared. In 2003 the Red Cross stated that it had received 20,000 complaints of disappearances during the Sri Lankan Civil War of which 9,000 had been resolved but the remaining 11,000 were still being investigated. Amnesty International reported in 2017 that the disappeared persons in Sri Lanka could be between 60,000 and 100,000 since the late 1980s.
Extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances in the Philippines are illegal executions – unlawful or felonious killings – and forced disappearances in the Philippines. These are forms of extrajudicial punishment, and include extrajudicial executions, summary executions, arbitrary arrest and detentions, and failed prosecutions due to political activities of leading political, trade union members, dissident or social figures, left-wing political parties, non-governmental organizations, political journalists, outspoken clergy, anti-mining activists, agricultural reform activists, members of organizations that are alleged as allied or legal fronts of the communist movement or claimed supporters of the NPA and its political wing, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Other frequent targets are ancestral land rights defenders, Indigenous rights activists, environmentalists, and human rights workers.
In most legal systems of the Spanish-speaking world, the writ of amparo is a remedy for the protection of constitutional rights, found in certain jurisdictions. The amparo remedy or action is an effective and inexpensive instrument for the protection of individual rights.
The political killings in the Philippines are a series of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of left-wing politicians and activists, journalists, human rights advocates, the political opposition, and outspoken clergy that have increased dramatically since 2001.
Neri Javier Colmenares is a Filipino legislator, human rights lawyer and activist. He was an associate of the Asian Law Centre at Melbourne Law School when he was completing his Ph.D. in law on "The Writ of Amparo and the International Criminal Court." He also lectured at the University of Melbourne on International Human Rights Law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
W.J. Basil Fernando is a Sri Lankan jurist, author, poet, human rights activist, editor of Article 2 and Ethics in Action, and a prolific writer. He was educated at St. Anthony's College, Wattala and St. Benedict's College, Kotahena. He earned an LL.B. from the University of Ceylon in 1972, registered as an Attorney-At-Law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in 1980 and practised law in Sri Lanka up to the end of 1989. He became a legal adviser to Vietnamese refugees in a UNHCR-sponsored project in Hong Kong. He joined the United Nations Transitional Authority (UNTAC) in 1992 as a senior human rights officer and later also served as the Chief of Legal Assistance to Cambodia of the UN Centre of Human Rights. He is associated with Asian Human Rights Commission and Asian Legal Resource centre, based in Hong Kong since 1994. In 2014, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "his tireless and outstanding work to support and document the implementation of human rights in Asia."
In Brazil, the National Truth Commission investigated human rights violations of the period of 1946–1988 - in particular by the authoritarian military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from April 1, 1964 to March 15, 1985.
Human rights abuses in Sindh, Pakistan, range from arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances to torture, extrajudicial killings, and political repression.
Forced disappearance in Pakistan originated during the military rule of General Pervez Musharraf. The practice continued during subsequent governments. The term missing persons is sometimes used as a euphemism. According to Amina Masood Janjua, a human rights activist and chairperson of Defence of Human Rights Pakistan, there are more than 5,000 reported cases of forced disappearance in Pakistan. Human rights activists allege that the law enforcement agencies in Pakistan are responsible for the cases of forced disappearance in Pakistan. However, the law enforcement agencies in Pakistan deny this and insist that many of the missing persons have either joined militant organisations such as the TTP in Afghanistan and other conflict zones or they have fled to be an illegal immigrant in Europe and died en route.
Bonifacio Parabuac Ilagan, often known just as Boni Ilagan, is a Filipino playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, journalist, and editor best known for numerous socially-conscious, critically-acclaimed works in theater, film and television, most notably the films The Flor Contemplacion Story (1995), Dukot, Sigwa, and Deadline ; as well as his first play, Pagsambang Bayan (1976), which portrayed the human rights violations of the Marcoses. He is also one of the prominent torture victims who survived the Marcos dictatorship.
