Gazans left behind in conflict, while Hamas leaders live in luxury

SALEEM SAMAD

There is no light at the end of the tunnel as the conflict escalates to new heights between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

There is no respite in al Qassem Brigades (Hamas military wing), shooting homemade Qassam rockets in Israel, when Israel Defence Force (IDF) in retaliation for Saturday mayhem and abduction, which sparked chaos in the region, thrusting the nationalist movement firmly into the global spotlight.

The Iran-backed militant Hezbollah in Lebanon, jihadist groups in Syria and of course, Hamas in Gaza, also militarily backed by Iran are pounding homemade rockets in Israel.

The Pentagon moved American aircraft carrier and warships closer to Israel in the Mediterranean Sea to send a harsh message to Hezbollah, the Asad regime in Syria and especially Islamic Iran not to provoke escalation in the Middle East.

The USS Gerald R Ford Carrier Strike Group includes the USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier, which is the largest warship in the world, in addition to the Ticonderoga – class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy and four Arleigh-Burke-class guided missile destroyers — USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney and USS Roosevelt.

Iran’s dreaded Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has long been involved in proxy wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The clergy regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran wants to give a sign warning to Saudi Arabia and Israel of their hegemony in the Middle East.

Iran is one of Hamas’s biggest benefactors. Iran’s top official Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Tehran was not involved in Hamas’ attack over the weekend. He however praised, what he described as Israel’s “irreparable” military and intelligence defeat.

Nevertheless, recent Iranian diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia have thawed relations with the Sheikhdom, but Riyadh is sceptical of Iran’s motives in waging proxy wars in the region. Iran Quds Force had trained and armed the Houthi rebels in Yemen, attacked military installations and fuel depots and refineries.

Iran has long been advocating crushing Israel found strong allies –Hezbollah and Hamas. The militant groups are funded and provided weapons and trained in military technology to build improvised rockets with precision targets and provided satellite images to Hezbollah and Hamas regarding IDF’s deployment and their military machines in the region.

Israel’s retaliatory strikes continue in Gaza by mobilising 360,000 reservists, regaining control over areas attacked by Hamas in the south and along the Gaza border.

Israel escalated its offensive entire districts in the region have been flattened, and houses razed. Hospitals and morgues were overwhelmed, reported an Indian TV journalist Palki Sharma from the Gaza border.

António Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations urged warring parties to allow access to deliver urgent humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians trapped and helpless in the Gaza Strip.

The UN boss aptly said that he “recognises the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people. But nothing can justify acts of terror and the killing, maiming and abduction of civilians.”

Recognising Israel’s legitimate security concerns, the UN chief calls for an immediate cease to these attacks and the release of all hostages. “Civilians must be respected and protected at all times,” he stressed.

Reminds Israel, that its military operations must be conducted in strict accordance with international humanitarian law.

Responding to UN calls, Egypt and Qatar are reported to have been making moves to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas to reduce the death and miseries of people in Gaza. The ceasefire will stop the destruction of Gaza City. Will the Hamas firing rockets and incursion against Israel stop?

On the other hand, Hamas supremo Ismail Haniyeh famously pledged to live on “zeit wa zaatar”— olive oil and dried herbs — after he led the Islamic militant faction to victory on a message of armed struggle and austerity during the 2006 Palestinian elections.

The election ousted a secular Al Fatah, a dominant group in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) founded by Yasser Arafat. Hamas fighters forcibly seized Fatah’s headquarters and claimed control of the 41 km long, 6 to 12 km wide, a total area of 365 sq. km with a population of two million Palestinians.

The group has since maintained political control of the area as a de facto government, and implemented harsh Islamic laws, as defined in strict Shariah laws.

Hamas never recognised the Palestine Authority of PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, West Bank and instead challenged its legitimacy to administer Gaza. Since then Gaza has been ruled by the militant Hamas, which also nurtured Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a fiercest militant outfit.

With Hamas in control of Gaza and Fatah in control of the West Bank, occupied by Israel, there were two de facto governments in the Palestinian territories, each claiming to be the legitimate government of the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a radical Palestinian cleric who became an activist of the Muslim Brotherhood after dedicating his early life to Islamic scholarship in Cairo.

In 1988, Hamas published its charter, calling for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic society in historic Palestine.

Since Ismail Haniyeh left the impoverished Gaza in 2019 along with some Hamas leaders, is presently living in luxury as he splits his time between Turkey and Qatar, travelling with a Turkish passport. Haniyeh has yet to return.

The Hamas leaders live in hotels and travel in private jets and their sons are in top positions in sports, and real estate business in Gaza. One son is known as the “Father of Real Estate”.

Akram Atallah, a long-time columnist for the West Bank-based Al-Ayyam newspaper who moved from Gaza to London in 2019, said when faulted for not providing basic services, it claims to be a resistance group; when criticised for imposing taxes, it says it’s a legitimate government, he said.

While Gazans grumble privately, they dare to raise their voice against Hamas, which has a history of locking up critics to severely punish delinquents.

Hamas also represses the Gazan media, civilian activism on social media, the political opposition, and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), reports Freedom House.

First published in the Northeast News, Guwahati, Assam, India on 12 October 2023

Saleem Samad is an award-winning independent journalist based in Bangladesh. A media rights defender with the Reporters Without Borders (@RSF_inter). Recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter: @saleemsamad

Hawara Rampage Has A Hallmark Of Sabra And Shatila Massacres

SALEEM SAMAD

The night of the riots in Hawara by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank last week has a trail of destruction sown by Israelis in the village by masked men to avenge the murder of the Jewish brothers by unidentified radicalised Palestinians – who are on the run after the elite Israel police are on a countrywide manhunt.

Hundreds of Jewish settlers descended on the northern West Bank town, killing 37-year-old Sameh Aqtash and wounding 98 other Palestinians after two Israeli brothers were gunned down by a Palestinian affiliated with the Nablus-based Lion’s Den militant group on 26 February.

The day after on 27 February, hundreds of settlers set fire to homes and cars and threw stones, it was obvious to anyone on the road leading into the West Bank Palestinian town that the rioters were still in control, the Haaretz newspaper describes the situation.

Scores of young Jewish vigilantes, many of them masked, gathered there in the morning checking vehicles in search of Palestinians. The Israeli soldiers kept a distance, but the vigilante was doing as they pleased, laments an Israeli newspaper.

The reports of a large Israeli army presence in the town existed only on paper. Many rebuked the armed forces for their incompetence.

Top Israel General Yehuda Fuchs, said the settler extremists are sowing terror. The vigilante settlers who rampaged through a Palestinian town in the West Bank had carried out a “pogrom” that caught the military off-guard, he remarked.

The general who is Head of the IDF (Israel Defence Force) Central Command and oversees the West Bank told Hebrew-language media that he was worried about clashes between soldiers and settlers and accused the Jewish extremists of “spreading terror.”

Meanwhile, the Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank didn’t dare wander around their village, which looked like a ghost town. The shops were shuttered, the streets strewn with rocks, and the smell of smoke was still in the air.

The army accused the rioters while civil society and human rights organisations blame intelligence failure.

On the other hand, Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi, Israel’s army chief denounces the attack by hundreds of Jewish settlers and laments that the army should have prevented the rampage by Jewish settlers in Hawara.

Israel’s army chief remarked that Israelis should halt the “internecine struggle” that has plagued the country since Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government took over two months ago.

Many attribute the chaos in Hawara as a hallmark of the massacre nearly forty years ago at Sabra and Shatila Palestine refugee camps by Israeli-backed right-wing Phalange militia killed between 2,000 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians between September 16 and 18, 1982.

However, the IDF commanders immediately scoffed off the allegation of Israel’s involvement in the bloody atrocities in the two refugee camps in Lebanon.

Shatila camp southwest of Lebanon’s capital city Beirut housed refugees who were victims of the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, fleeing the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias as Israel was formed.

The Hawara riot has invited global condemnation of Israel’s handling of the situation. Hady Amr, the U.S. special representative for Palestinian affairs, visited the scene of occurrence and condemned “the unacceptable wide-scale, indiscriminate violence by settlers” and wants “to see full accountability and legal prosecution of those responsible for these heinous attacks and compensation for those who lost property or were otherwise affected,” echoing calls by State Department spokesperson Ned Price.

European Union calls for protection of civilians, de-escalation amid rising West Bank violence and urges all perpetrators must be brought to justice.

The European Union in a statement expressed its concern over recent deadly violence in the West Bank, calling for the protection of civilians and immediate de-escalator steps.

The EU statement also commended Jordan, Egypt, and the US for convening Sunday’s summit in Aqaba, Jordan which brought Israeli and Palestine Authority officials together in an attempt to tamp down on the violence ahead of the month of Ramadan.

The Israel media claims several ministers are demanding more aggressive actions, despite the looming holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which in recent years has become a time of heightened tensions and violence.

Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians have been high for the past year, with the IDF conducting near-nightly raids in the West Bank amid a series of deadly Palestinian terror attacks, writes Times of Israel.

First appeared in the The News Times, Dhaka, Bangladesh on 3 March 2023

Saleem Samad, is an award-winning independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at <saleemsamad@hotmail.com>; Twitter @saleemsamad

Why did the Accords fail to end Israeli occupation in Palestine?

Historic Oslo Accords was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat on Sept 13, 1993, in a White House ceremony presided over by United States President Bill Clinton

SALEEM SAMAD

Several factions of Palestinian organizations called for the cancellation of the Oslo Accords and the adoption of a national agenda for holding credible elections, forming a new national government, and rebuilding the state.

Recently, the Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas negated any reconciliation with the defiant Hamas militants occupying the Gaza strip unless it recognizes international resolutions. Abbas stressed that “there would be no dialogue with them (Hamas)” unless Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh responded in black and white and “[signed] with his name.”

Responding to Abbas’ conditions, Hamas spokesperson said that it would be “surrendering” to the Zionists (Israelis). He stated that “it [was] opposed with the Palestinian national consensus,” and described the PA stand as a “big obstacle” ahead of reaching national unity based on the Cairo understandings, which are being accepted by all Palestinian factions.

Hamas was born out of that Intifada uprising in the 1990s, which helped transform the entire Palestinian political landscape.

Presently, Gaza became a globally recognized symbol of resistance to aggression and the brutality of Israel’s occupation. Months after the bloody uprising, Israel was secretly negotiating with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Oslo, Norway -- which came to be known as the Oslo Accords.

The historic accord was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat on September 13, 1993, in a White House ceremony presided over by jubilant United States President Bill Clinton.

The following year, Arafat and Rabin signed the Cairo Agreement, named after the Egyptian capital. The ultimate goal of both the Oslo Accords and Cairo Agreement was a resolution to grant autonomy to the people of Palestine, whereby Israel would end its occupation in both Gaza and Jericho.

In reality, the Palestinian Authority was born and Gaza-Jericho first was hailed as the first step towards a Palestinian state and the two nations were supposed to live peacefully. But after three decades, little has changed for the Palestinians. In fact, Israel tilted to the right and the state became more aggressive in its denial of Palestinian rights.

The successive governments in Tel Aviv (later shifted to Jerusalem) have done everything possible to undermine both agreements, rendering them into pieces of paper, and causing further disadvantage to the Palestinians.

According to the Accords and subsequent agreements, Palestinians should be living in a “state” within demarcated borders and making their own decisions through a democratic process. The Accords invited the curse for the PLO and its main faction, Al Fatah (founded by Yasser Arafat), which was known as the Palestinian National Liberation Movement.

Palestinians today remain internally divided and brutally oppressed and are losing more of the land that was promised for their future state. After decades of bloodshed and violence and the grassroots rejection of the occupation by Palestinians, Israeli policymakers came to believe that Israel could not continue its failing and costly occupation.

Israel cleverly allowed the PLO to become the civilian authority of PA in a divide and rule policy, like any other colonialist. Thus, it marked a turning point in the Palestinian struggle for independence and freedom, and the ageing liberation movement turned ineffective.

Obviously, the Israeli regime is most benefitted from the division of Palestinians along factional lines despite their united goal to create a Palestinian state. Several times, Hamas hoped to join the PLO as a way of becoming recognized by Palestinians as a legitimate national government of the Palestine Authority.

In the years to come, factionalism, suspiciousness, and distrust have widened the political divide, leaving no hope for Hamas to be represented in the PLO.

Last week, Dr Mustafa Fetouri, a Libyan academic and recipient of the EU’s Freedom of the Press prize, wrote in the Middle East Monitor that many Palestinians believe Hamas did the right thing by not insisting on joining the PLO after the latter became no more than a failed and corrupt political organization.

Today, the Palestine state, dominated by the PLO, has lost its pride and historical legitimacy to become yet another failed bureaucracy. The PA is riddled with massive corruption and is on the brink of a failed state.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune, 12 October 2021

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at <saleemsamad@hotmail.com>; Twitter @saleemsamad

Arabs have failed the Palestinians

Smoke and flames rise from a tower building as it is destroyed by Israeli air strikes amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence, in Gaza City May 12, 2021 Reuters

SALEEM SAMAD

The 11-day fierce fire-fight between the militants of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad with Israel caused at least 243 people, including more than 100 women and children, to be killed in Gaza.

The Israeli military says more than 4,300 homemade Qassam rockets --   a simple, steel artillery rocket developed and deployed by the military arm of Hamas -- were fired towards its territory by Palestinian militants.

Since the rockets were pressed into conflict with Israel in 2001, the improvised rocketry technology is not capable of being fired to target military sites, and is "indiscriminate when used against targets in population centres."

Nevertheless, the improvised rockets rained down deep into central Israel and crashed into former capital Tel Aviv. Israel’s state-of-the-art air defense system “Iron Dome” however managed to intercept 90% of the rockets from Gaza.

On the 12th day, Egypt brokered a ceasefire which was also backed by US President Joe Biden. The fragile ceasefire apparently seems to have halted the skirmish for a while. No surprise that both sides have claimed victory.

In a virtual conference held several days after the airstrikes caused havoc in Gaza, the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) was outraged, when hundreds of women and children were victims of collateral damage over the conflict in Gaza.

Only Saudi Arabia condemned Israel for “flagrant violations” in Gaza, calling on the global community to act urgently to put an end to Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

Surprisingly, most Arab countries except Kuwait, Iran, and Turkey did not rebuke Israel harshly for the recent conflict that started in East Jerusalem during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which spread to Gaza as a result of Israeli assaults on worshippers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and coupled with the eviction of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.

The Muslim countries are divided in a thick and thin line of a partisan realignment of a global superpower. Despite being the “guardians of Islam” and “protector of Muslims,” Arab monarchies have demonstrated that they care only to counter Iran.

Joe Biden, however, reiterated that the Israel and Palestine crisis lies in a two-state solution, nothing more and nothing less to create a sovereign Palestine State.

The radicalized Islamist party Hamas had landslide wins in 2005 and 2006 elections in Gaza, which resulted in a crucial split of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), established as a consequence of the 1993–1995 Oslo Accords.

The Palestine Authority, dominated by the Fatah party, was founded by Yasser Arafat and is governed from Ramallah in the West Bank. The PNA is recognized internationally as the sole representative of the State of Palestine but does not recognize the Hamas authority which rules Gaza.

The trouble began when Fatah lost the elections to Hamas in Gaza. Subsequent Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, and the joint Egyptian-Israeli blockade of Gaza, have exacerbated the conflict.

As part of its 2005 disengagement plan, Egypt retained control of the border, and border crossings were supervised by European monitors, while Israel retained exclusive control over Gaza's airspace and territorial waters, and continued to patrol and monitor the external land perimeter of Gaza.

According to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Israel remains an occupying power under international law. The United Nations has stated that under resolutions of both the General Assembly and the Security Council, it regards Gaza to be part of the "Occupied Palestinian Territories."

The international community is outraged at indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian structures that do not differentiate between civilians and military targets -- and that is tantamount to a crime against humanity under international law.

First published in Dhaka Tribune, 27 May 2021

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award. Email saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter @saleemsamad

Will Pakistan recognize Israel?

Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri shakes hands with Israeli FM Silvan Shalom. Istanbul, Turkey. Sept. 1, 2005. It remains the only publicly acknowledged talks between the two states, Photo: AP

SALEEM SAMAD

Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan’s political buzzword “Naya Pakistan” has given lots of surprises since he came to power in the last quarter of 2018.

Khan has failed to allure his neighboring countries, especially India, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. Instead, he went three steps forward to make the relationship from sweet to sour.

On the other side, Pakistan’s most distinguished print and TV journalist, Kamran Khan, who is also editor-in-chief for the influential Dunya Media Group, triggered a controversial debate in a tweet: “Why can’t we openly debate the pros and cons of opening direct and overt channels of communication with the State of Israel?”

It was once a taboo to overtly discuss a relationship with Israel, but the issue has entered Pakistan’s capital Islamabad and has spilled over into mainstream discourse.

Early this year, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi of “Naya Pakistan” told the Israeli newspaper Maariv that Pakistan wants “normal ties” with Israel.

Speculation is ripe about whether or not the ace cricketer, Khan, has let the balloons loose to feel the pulse of the mainstream. A renewed debate has been active in Islamabad over the recognition of Israel for the past 12 months.

In the decades of hostility among Muslim countries and the Jewish State of Israel, except for a few Arab and Muslim countries, none has recognized the country which was given birth using forceps by superpowers in the late 1940s in the hostile neighborhood of Palestine.

In the same decade, 50% of Muslims in India decided to migrate to a new country -- born through a cesarean section -- on the basis of religion.

After two months of the nation-state being founded on Muslim nationalism, Pakistan’s first foreign minister Zafarullah Khan rejected the concept of Jewish nationalism in the United Nations General Assembly session on October 1947.

He argued that, unlike Pakistan, a Jewish state in Palestine would be an “artificial” result of “immigration,” thus ignoring the partition of India that caused large scale cross-border migration, and which is described as a dark period.

Following Israel’s independence, its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion sent a telegram to the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in a bid to establish diplomatic relations. The message was stowed into cold storage.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had a “fanatical hatred” for Israel in the 70s, but at the same time did not “conceal his dislike for Arabs.”

In August 1994, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto quietly declined to visit Gaza because the visit would have to be coordinated with Israeli authority, as part of their agreement with Palestine.

Despite Islamist pressure and Pakistan being controlled by its military, several unofficial diplomatic exchanges have taken place between Pakistani and Israeli officials over the decades, including the reported meetings of Israeli president Ezer Weizman with his counterpart Rafiq Tarar (in Ankara in 1988), and with Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (Johannesburg, 1994).

The political governments in Pakistan are hesitant to seek a breakthrough in establishing diplomatic ties with Israel when the nation and the military, both major stakeholders, condemn Israel’s killing of Palestine and Arab “Muslims.”

Fourteen years ago, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri held their first-ever publicly acknowledged meeting with Israeli FM Silvan Shalom on September 1, 2005, at Istanbul. After Ankara and Istanbul’s tête-à-tête, the interactions between Israel and Pakistan have been limited to counter-terror intelligence and arms trade.

The military dictator General Pervez Musharraf has continued to urge Pakistan to establish relations with Israel, echoing the views of Pakistan’s corridors of power.

Imran Khan, being the army’s “Chosen One,” has guaranteed protection against domestic backlash from the military, which would hope to benefit from formal defense ties with Israel.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune, 10 September 2019

Saleem Samad, is an independent journalist, media rights defender also recipient of Ashoka Fellow and Hellman-Hammett Award

Victims of abduction in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Nepal & Ugyhur

Women shout slogans during a protest following restrictions after the government scrapped the special constitutional status for Kashmir, in Srinagar August 14, 2019. Photo: REUTERS

SALEEM SAMAD

As the world observes the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on Aug 30, another hundred or more people will be abducted silently by state security agencies globally.

Their relatives will hold portraits of disappeared family members and call upon governments to stop such abductions, and seek accountability for the enforced disappearances, killings, and abductions, in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Palestine and elsewhere.

Families cry for answers on International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on August 30, a day declared by the United Nations.

Since its inception in 1980, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has registered 56,363 cases across 112 countries — but thousands of other cases were simply not reported!

Unfortunately, governments are often reluctant to respond. Besides, security agencies engaged in enforced disappearances, while non-state actors also settle their scores in muddy waters. They enjoy their impunity as they rub shoulders with the mighty in the corridors of power.

The impunity is extended to these forces, often because their crimes against humanity may have had government sanction.

The legal explanation does not, however, convey the horror families endure as they try and grapple with the enforced disappearance of a loved one.

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch says, under international human rights law, an enforced disappearance occurs when a person is taken into custody by government officials or their agents and the state refuses to acknowledge the person’s fate or whereabouts, placing the victim outside the protection of the law.

In South Asia, the recent history of violent conflicts ------ whether the war in Afghanistan; insurgencies in Balochistan, Pakistan or Kashmir, India; the civil war in Sri Lanka and Nepal; or political violence in Bangladesh and the Maldives------ has witnessed serious human rights violations including secret detentions and enforced disappearance, states the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Bangladesh authorities have traditionally trashed allegations of the disappearances even after the security forces have taken someone away in front of witnesses. Instead, the agencies claim that the ‘disappeared’ are hiding to evade banks loans or are felons dodging arrest.

In Indian administered Kashmir, they use the shocking word ‘half widow,’ for women whose husbands are missing.

In Kashmir, hundreds of unidentified foreign jihadists are buried in unmarked graves, but the government is yet to order forensic tests to determine whether the remains of "disappeared" Kashmiris also lie buried in those graveyards.

In Sri Lanka, families of the tens of thousands of people who disappeared during the three-decade-long bitter ethnic civil war are camped in street corner protests. The war ended in 2009, and these families are still hoping that their loved ones will be found.

In Nepal, a Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons received nearly 3,100 complaints but failed to explain the causes and origin of the scary social phenomenon experienced so widely during the country’s ten-year civil war.

The victims experience egregious form of human rights violation, removed from legal protections, remaining at the mercy of their captors, at severe risk of torture or inhumane treatment, and of extrajudicial killings, says Meenakshi Ganguly.

"The families of missing ones spend the rest of their lives waiting for their loved ones to return home, or at least be told where they are buried. This is a severe form of psychological torture," said Leonce Byimana, a psychologist and Executive Director of TASSC, a US-based Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition.

On this International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, human rights leaders will be speaking on behalf of missing loved ones---- for the Sindhis in Pakistan, the Kurds in the Middle East, the Tamils in Sri Lanka and Uyghur Muslims in China at the National Press Club in Washington DC.

Sufi Laghari, Executive Director of the Washington DC-based Sindhi Foundation also coordinating the Washington Press Club event, said: "We want people to understand how governments carry out enforced disappearances to silence their dissidents."

Until their whereabouts are determined, families of the disappeared should have access to effective remedies and reparations, including regular updates on the status of the investigations. This cruelty needs to stop.

First published in the Bangla Tribune, 30 August 2019

Saleem Samad, is a journalist, media rights defender, also recipient of Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award. Twitter @saleemsamad; Email: saleemsamad@hotmail.com