Enforced disappearance redress caught in govt inaction

Editorial

WHAT rights group Odhikar comes up with in its findings is gravely worrying in that the number of victims of enforced disappearances doubled in September, with 30 going missing, compared with 28 who went missing in January–August. In the event of the government not instituting any investigation of the incidents, with an aim to stop the menace, involuntary disappearances keep taking place apace. The Asian Legal Resource Centre, in the report that it submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in view of its 39th session in September, said that at least 432 people fell victim to enforced disappearances between January 2009 and July 2018. 

The report that time said that a fourth of the victims, reported to have been picked up by personnel of various security and law enforcement forces, land in police custody long after they had gone missing. The luckiest of them could walk out of confinement or jail but they all maintained an eerie silence about the incidents. The police at the same time are reported to be reluctant at recording any case about the involuntary disappearances. And even if the police do record cases, they almost never roll down to investigation as the police, till then, are reported to have investigated only one such case in the preceding 10 years.

Such a behaviour of the police is worrying as the way the incidents of enforced disappearances evolve suggest, largely and in most of the cases, the hand of the state actors behind them although there could be cases, particularly in the absence of the government’s political will to look into the incidents seriously, where non-state actors could be involved. The incidents, whoever are there playing behind, constitute an affront to the rule of law and a breach of laws and the constitution.

The incidents also expose citizens to a fearful situation, as anybody, personnel of law enforcement and security agencies or private individuals impersonating as law enforcement and security personnel, could pick up any citizen. The government as the manager of the state appears hardly serious about legal redress in such cases, which further lends credence to the public perception that state actors are behind most of such incidents. 

The government should immediately look deeply into the cases of disappearances and resolve the mystery and tell people about it as any kind of ambiguity in these cases would ultimately consolidate the impunity for the people who are behind enforced disappearances. Such a failure of the state not to know what happens to people who go missing could pave the way for an increase in the number of enforced disappearances. Any government inaction in this connection would plunge the nation into lawlessness.

The government, under the circumstances, must institute independent investigations of the cases to deterrently stop the practice. The government should also think of enacting a law to criminalise enforced or involuntary disappearances and of setting up an independent tribunal to deal with cases of enforced disappearances with powers to investigate any individual or organisation suspected to be behind such crimes and take action against anyone engaged in such dangerous practice.

• Courtesy: New Age / Oct 04, 2018