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Situation in Asia

Disappearances in Asia have occurred from the 60's onwards and continue to occur today in various countries. Asia has more than a dozen countries that experienced disappearances. Especially South and South East Asia have a history of enforced disappearances, with tens of thousands of people going missing over the past decades in countries such as India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Asia holds the highest number of recorded disappearances compared to other regions according to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced Disappearances (UNWGEID). The actual numbers of disappearances in Asian countries are even higher than the numbers recorded by the UNWGEID.

Disappearances in Asia cannot be described in general terms. Disappearances in Asia are best analyzed on a country to country basis.  

One important aspect which Asian victims do have in common is that they don’t have the disposal of a regional legal protection mechanism such as the Inter American system in Latin America or the European Court on Human Rights in Europe. Victims have to depend on, often inadequate, domestic law and/or the universal mechanisms of the United Nations.

Sometimes disappearances in Asia are experienced in an entire country and it touches a wide range of groups in society as part of a general repression. This can be seen in the Philippines over the years 1985 – 2007 during the different administrations. However, often disappearances take place in specific regions and are aimed at specific groups. Examples of the later in Asia are the North Eastern province of Sri Lanka, the Mindanao region in the Philippines, the South of Thailand, Balochistan in Pakistan and Kashmir and Punjab in India.  

In some cases disappearances occurred over longer periods of time during dictatorships, repressive regimes or other long term internal conflicts such as in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India (Kashmir and Punjab), Pakistan and Nepal. But also in these counties there are specific periods where most people disappeared; in 1988-1989 the majority of the estimated 60,000 disappearances took place in Sri Lanka. The month of December 1989 reported the highest numbers of disappeared in Sri Lanka. In countries like Timor Leste and Indonesia the highest number of disappearances occurred in a relatively short period of time. In Timor-Leste in 1992 and between 1998 and 2000. In Indonesia the beginning (and the end) of the New Order Regime of Suharto in 1965-1966 and 1998 was characterized by gross human rights violations. 

Disappearances in Asia have also taken place during specific incidents such as the Tiananmen massacre in China and the May 1992 massacre in Thailand.

Countries and data

Countries where disappearances are occurring:  

Afghanistan, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Democratic People’s Republic (North Korea), Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, The Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor-Leste

Countries in with the most notorious history in disappearances:

  • Sri Lanka: There are estimates of up to 60.000 disappearances. The UNWGEID recorded ‘only’ 12319 cases of disappearances in Sri Lanka between 1980 and 2006. The cases reported to the UNWGEID seemed to have occurred in the context of two major conflicts in Sri-Lanka: the confrontation between Tamil militants and government forces in the north and north-east of the country, and that between the People’s Liberation Front (JVP) and government forces in the south.
  • Timor-Leste: The majority of cases of disappearances reported to the UNWGEID occurred between 1998 and 2000 in, when it was under Indonesian control. A large number concerned students involved in anti-Government demonstrations
  • Philippines: The majority of the cases reported to the UNWGEID occurred throughout the country in the late 1970s and early 80s during an Government’s anti-insurgency campaign. Disappearances have continued during the 1990s, mainly in the context of military operations.

Other Asian countries where disappearances were systematic during a certain period and resulted in a large number (hundreds or thousands) of victims are Pakistan, Thailand, Nepal, The Philippines, Indonesia, India, and Timor-Leste.

For countries like Democratic Republic of Korea and Myanmar official records and information from NGOs monitoring these countries do not show many cases of disappearances. The totalitarian regimes in these countries however are known for numerous human rights violations and could well be responsible for significant numbers of disappearances.

Also reports of numbers of disappearances in China are not unambiguous. There are guesses for thousands of people having disappeared but hard confirmation does not exist.

In Afghanistan the estimated amount of disappearances do not indicate gross numbers or a system of disappearances however disappearances have occurred on occasion during past decades and continue to occur.

Organisations

Even though the countries and the background of all the disappearances are different the victims share the same pain, no matter whether they are in: Sri Lanka or Indonesia, Thailand or India. The search for truth, justice, redress and memory is unique for each relative but also contains many similarities with the fate of other victims. Thousands of relatives have organised themselves in organisations of families of disappeared persons. Examples are FIND in the Philippines and APDP in. Together with concerned human rights organisations they support the individual family members in their search.  (AFAD) is an human rights federation of organisations concerned with the issue of involuntary disappearances.

Organisations that work on the issue of enforced disappearances in the region are: