No más secuestro

 

Yesterday thousands of people gathered in cities across Mexico to register their anger at the wave of kidnappings and other violence that has plagued the country. President Felipe Calderon is criticised for doing little to protect ordinary citizens despite his vow to be tough on crime – specifically narcotics-related crime. The kidnapping rate in Mexico now rivals or may even surpass those of Iraq and Colombia.

International Day of the Disappeared

 

Tomorrow marks the 25^th anniversary of the International Day of the Disappeared, which originated in Latin America with the Federación Latinoamericana de Asociaciones de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos.This day aims to draw attention to the fate of individuals imprisoned at places and under poor conditions unknown to their relatives and/or legal representatives.

 

Why mark this day in this blog? There is an intimate connection between disappearances and kidnapping. Forced disappearances generally begin with kidnapping. Yet whereas in kidnapping family members or officials generally have some communication with the hostage takers (including so-called “proofs of life”, documentation to prove the victim is alive and therefore to keep negotiations for his/her release open), a forced disappearance usually leads to illegal detention, torture, murder and burial in unmarked graves.

 

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has registered roughly 46,000 cases of enforced disappearances around the globe. The International Coalition against Enforced Disappearances maintains a campaign site that outlines some of the events around the world commemorating this occasion.

Tragic clarification

 

Yesterday news sources from Afghanistan reported that a Japanese aid worker was freed hours after being taken hostage. Today the news has been amended with an unfortunate outcome – apparently Kazuya Ito (pictured) was not released but killed during a fight between Afghan security forces and the Taliban, who claimed responsibility for seizing the man. Ito’s driver, thankfully, was freed unharmed. This murder follows a month of senseless violence in the country – from the killing of civilians by international forces to the murder of several other aid workers with the International Rescue Committee.

 

News from Afghanistan, Somalia

 

A Japanese aid worker kidnapped in eastern Afghanistan yesterday with his driver was freed hours after the abduction. Credit goes to the local police, who managed to uncover the whereabouts of the hostage and free him after a raid.

 

Meanwhile, in Somalia, the search continues for two journalists taken hostage with their Somali fixer and driver over the weekend near Mogadishu. The two – an Australian and a Canadian – were travelling to nearby refugee camps when an unknown armed group seized them.

Carroll kidnapper caught

Two senior Al Qaeda suspects – one who allegedly was behind the abduction of journalist Jill Carroll in January 2006 – have been arrested in Iraq. There is some speculation that associates of the suspects also were involved in the kidnapping and murder of Save the Children aid worker Margaret Hassan in 2004. Jill Carroll was released in March 2006 and later wrote a poignant account of her ordeal for the Christian Science Monitor, the paper at which she was employed.

NGO profile: IFFAMPAC

 

As part of ongoing research for this blog, I have been attempting to find organisations whose work centres on the kidnapped. This is not an easy task – many humanitarian groups include kidnapping as a category within their ongoing human rights monitoring efforts, but very few deal exclusively with the issue. Even those that do tend to focus their efforts on simply counting the numbers of hostages in different countries, rather than provide outreach and support to relatives and communities affected by kidnapping.

 

Therefore I was pleased to come across the US-based International Federation of Family Associations of Missing Persons from Armed Conflicts (IFFAMPAC). IFFAMPAC provides a voice for families of the missing, whoever they may be – combatants and non-combatants, persons who have been killed and remain unidentified/unaccounted for, those who willingly go into hiding, and those who are kidnapped or disappeared.

 

 

According to their website, the organisation’s main attention is on the family unit. As they write:

 

Individual surviving families need help to stay together and rebuild their lives. They are relatively dispersed and do not attract the attention of major institutions… IFFAMPAC represents these diverse families and makes their voice heard in a way which the large international operations simply cannot do. IFFAMPAC has one focus – the families who survive armed conflicts.

 

Included on the IFFAMPAC website is a resource list of associations from around the world who deal in missing persons, especially in the Balkans. While most of these groups encompass a range of missing persons, many are inclusive of the kidnapped, e.g. the Association of Families of Kidnapped and Missing Persons from Kosovo and Metohija.

Kidnapping Muslims in Manila

 

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting is an excellent source of in-depth reports on human rights issues in conflict areas. This week, they include this thought-provoking feature from the Philippines. The article describes how Muslims from Mindanao in the southern Philippines who’ve migrated to the capital in search of a better life have been the target of abductions by renegade Philippine National Police members. The phenomenon has become so common, there is even a new word coined to describe it: hulidap, a merging of the terms for arrest and kidnap. Thankfully the government’s Office of Muslim Affairs and the National Capital Region Police Office have expressed a commitment to clamp down on the occurrences. Yet part of their battle is defeating the negative stereotypes of the Muslim minority population that fuel the violations of their rights.

 

Uribe’s legacy

 

In an exclusive article, World Politics Review analyses some of the challenges and successes of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe as he marks six years in office. Of course, at the top of the list of reasons why Uribe is considered the most popular and successful president in Colombian history has been the way he has managed to weaken FARC. The successful and bloodless hostage rescue in early July only solidified his standing. The number of annual kidnappings when Uribe first took office averaged well over 2,000 – a number which has plummeted more by than 80% in 2008. Nevertheless, the article points out that Uribe still faces challenges handling the vast number of  internally displaced persons, one of the world’ highest.

Kidnap crisis in Georgia

 

It is not surprising that the current crisis in South Ossetia has led to the taking of hostages in the breakaway region. According to the Guardian, 131 Georgian civilians have been seized and are being held in the interior ministry headquarters. Women and at least one child are included in the total. There is talk that the group is being held in hopes of negotiating for kidnapped Ossetians.

Given the terrible history of kidnappings in the Caucasus, this situation does not bode well.

FARC hostage-taker faces extradition

 

Helí Mejía Mendoza – one of the alleged highers-up within FARC who was personally responsible for chaining up its hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt – has been indicted in a US federal court and may be extradited to the United States to stand trial. These charges originate in part because of his role in the kidnapping of three American defence contractors, who were released last month.

Mendoza also faces numerous charges of kidnapping and murder in Colombia, and some critics believe he should face trial there instead of in the US, to prove that Colombia can mete out justice in such cases.