When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

— Thomas Jefferson

IN March 1976, a military coup overthrew the elected civilian government in Argentina.

The coup had been preceded by a period of economic crisis and political
instability and many Argentines welcomed the generals. Little did they
know that brutal repression was to follow.

Under Operation Condor, the military unleashed a ‘war against
subversion’, targeting anyone considered ‘unpatriotic’. These included
individuals, students, political activists, labour and human rights
organisations.

However, the Argentine generals, having studied the lessons of previous
military dictatorships, were determined to carry out their repression
quietly and largely out of sight. They decided that rather than filling
stadiums with political prisoners or leaving mutilated bodies on the
side of roads, they would perfect the practice of kidnapping their
victims from their homes, murder them in secret and leave no evidence
behind.

Many political dissidents were heavily drugged and then thrown alive
out of planes flying above the Atlantic Ocean, leaving no trace of
their passing. Without any dead bodies, the government could deny they
had been killed. In this manner some 15,000 to 30,000 men and women
became desaparecidos — the Spanish and Portuguese term for the
‘disappeared’ that specifically refers to the mostly South American
victims of state terrorism during the 1970s and 1980s.

A forced disappearance occurs when an organisation forces a person to
vanish from view, either by murder or by simple sequestration. The
victim is first kidnapped, then illegally detained, often executed and
the corpse hidden.

According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,
which came into force on July 1, 2002, when committed as part of a
widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population,
‘forced disappearances’ qualify as a crime against humanity, which thus
cannot be subject to the statute of limitation.

Imprisonment under secret or uncertain circumstances is a grave
violation of some conceptions of human rights as well as, in the case
of an armed conflict, of international humanitarian law. The United
Nations General Assembly adopted a declaration on the Protection of All
Persons from Enforced Disappearance as Resolution 47/133 on Dec 18,
1992.

Despite this, it is estimated that secret imprisonment is still
practised in about 30 countries. The UN’s Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) working group on enforced or
involuntary disappearances has registered close to 50,000 cases of
people who disappeared under unknown circumstances.

The common denominator in all these countries is authoritarian rule,
gross violation of human rights, abuse of power by state authorities,
lack of accountability and a weak and complaint judiciary.

Pakistan has the dubious distinction of being a member of this select
group of countries. While exact numbers are difficult to determine,
hundreds, if not thousands, of Pakistanis have simply disappeared.
Since 9/11 and the so-called ‘war on terror’ the disappearance of
Pakistani citizens has increased. Many continue to languish in secret
detention centres and prisons, subjected to psychological and physical
torture with no recourse to justice. Many are taken out of the country
to other destinations, including the now infamous Guantanamo Bay prison
in Cuba.

Nothing can highlight the plight of the disappeared more poignantly
than the ongoing ordeal of the Pakistani neuroscientist Dr Aafia
Siddiqui. A mother of three small children, Dr Siddiqui simply
‘vanished’ one day in March 2003.

Both the Pakistani and US governments denied any knowledge of her
whereabouts. Both continued to do so for the next five years until out
of the blue she turned up last month in the middle of Afghanistan,
outside the governor of Ghazni’s compound. The bizarre events that
followed her arrest and her extradition to the US defies belief.

In a perverse way, despite all that she must have gone through (and one
cannot even begin to fathom her experience), Dr Siddiqui is one of the
fortunate ones, for she has ‘reappeared’. The less fortunate never
return. Can one imagine what their families must endure? Imagine what
happens to us when a father, brother, mother, sister, son or a daughter
is late coming back from work or college. Imagine the anxiety and
distress we go through until contact is made or the individual returns
home.

Now imagine an individual who simply disappears with his/her family
left in the dark about their whereabouts. As no judicial procedure is
followed in the ‘arrest’ no authority needs to admit the existence of
the individual. The suffering of the families is probably as severe as
the torture of the ‘arrested’ individual. Many develop complicated
mental health problems and grief reactions from which they never
recover. Many die, waiting in vain for the disappeared to return.
Imagine what Dr Siddiqui’s mother must have gone through over the last
five years of her disappearance.

What lessons are we to learn from the desaparecidos of Argentina,
Pakistan and other countries where this practice goes on? There are
several: recognising an individual’s right to liberty; the right of
presumed innocence until proven guilty; and the right of the accused to
defend himself in a court of law. These are the foundational principles
of any fair society.

The other important lesson is that we must avoid at all costs the
dangerous precedent set in Argentina in 1976 (now practised in the US)
that allows the chief executive or his designate to declare a person an
‘enemy combatant’ (or enemy of the state) without a judicial process.

The fundamental problem with such absolute power is that it allows
repressive state authority to kidnap, detain, imprison, torture and
execute anyone, without the right to defend himself, on mere suspicion.
This is being followed by many repressive regimes and must be struck
down.

The ‘disappeared’ are a blot on a nation’s conscience. They remind us
that societies whose government treats citizens with disdain, do not
respect their rights, abuse power and authority and deny them the right
to justice and freedom, are all but doomed. Sixty-one years after
independence, with hundreds of our citizens secretly kidnapped and
tortured, we are experiencing this bitter lesson. Let’s hope it is not
lost on us.

The writer is professor of psychiatry, Aga Khan University, Karachi

muradmk@gmail.come

 http://www.dawn.com/2008/08/18/op.htm