Table of contents
Situation in Europe
Enforced disappearances don’t happen only in South America, Asia or Africa. This problem has no ethnic, cultural or racial background. The problem also exists in Europe; Belarus, Chechnya, Ingushetia and the former Yugoslavia take the lead the number of disappearances in this region. Amnesty International
In Belarus several high-profile personalities disappeared in 1999 and 2000 and some of these cases still remained unresolved. Trials have taken place in one of the cases and defendants have been punished to long prison terms. However human rights monitors regarded the trial and convictions as flawed- it took place behind closed doors and failed to address a series of allegations implicating senior state officials. The civil initiative ‘We Remember’ led by the wives of two of the disappeared victims, aims to learn the truth about what happened to the missing people as well as to disseminate information inside the country and internationally about enforced disappearances
In Chechnya enforced disappearances of state agents by armed groups have been among the human rights violations during the Chechen conflict. The scale, on which this has taken place in the small republic, and the cruelty of this form of abuse, has made it especially horrific. The Russian NGO Memorial has collected over 2,000 cases of enforced disappearances and abductions in Chechnya. These figures correspond to one-third of the territory of the Chechen Republic. In fact Memorial estimates that between 3,000 and 5,000 people, including children have gone missing in the Chechen Republic since 1999. In the majority of those cases, state agents were allegedly responsible.
Ingushetia is a sadly famous region of the Russian Federation for the number of enforced disappearances together with other human right violations that take place. The origin of these crimes is attributed to the spread of the armed conflicht in Chechnya to Ingushetia. Between 10 and 22 ethnic Ingush men are reported to have gone missing in Ingushetia and in neighbouring North Ossetia.
Countries and data
According to the reports of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances [Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances] (UNWGEID) the most egregious cases of disappearances in this area are those that occurred in the following countries:
Belarus, Russian Federation, Serbia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
The country with the highest reported number of disappearances and the only one in which disappearances has been reported to the working group in 2007 is the Russian Federation. As mentioned above, a large number of cases concerned persons of Ingush ethnicity or have occurred in the Republic of Chechnya since 1994 in context of the conflict there. Disappearances were alleged to have been carried out by Russian armed and security forces.
Included in the last report the UNWGEID shows its concern about the new cases occurring of enforced disappearances, and the suspension of investigations as well as the impartiality of the investigation.
Organisations
The following NGOs or family organisations work in the issue of enforced disappearances in this region:
- We Remember www.ciwr.org
- Memorial, Russian Federation www.memo.ru
- Stichting Russian Justice Initiative (SRJI) www.srji.org
- International Helsinki Federation www.ihf-hr.org