‘Our struggle ensures truth has not been covered up or forgotten’
SRINAGAR: Scores of parents of disappeared persons (APDP) assembled at press enclave in Srinagar today to stage a sit-in protest to seek whereabouts of missing family members.
They said that for twenty-four years, the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) and its individual members and volunteers have been campaigning against the phenomenon of enforced or involuntary disappearances in Jammu and Kashmir, wherein more than 8000 people have disappeared since 1989.
They said that the campaign has been to search and remember the disappeared, affirm the disappeared families’ right to know the truth, right to justice and reparations, and to demand that the government ratify and implement the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
“An integral part of APDP’s struggle has been to use the law and judicial institutions. Since last one week, APDP notes legal developments in three cases of enforced disappearances, which once again remind us that it is through the struggle for justice that the memory of the disappeared is preserved and the contradictions of the state exposed”, the statement issued reads.
It adds that the state institutions failed to support the victim families and the legal processes have been delayed and exhausting. “Yet, the struggle of the families of disappeared has ensured that the truth has not been covered up or forgotten. The onus lies on the state to find the disappeared and investigate the role of the perpetrators responsible”, they said.
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