Since the Syrian uprising in 2011, the number of detainees in Syrian Government’s detention centers have significantly increased along with the violations of human rights against them.
Caesar Photos: The military photographer, code-names Caesar, was working for the Syrian government for 13 years. Before 2011 his work mainly was to photograph people who died because of accidents or suicide. However, during his work, he noticed that a large number of the bodies were of victims of torture.
CFA have been working to improve the cooperation with other Syrian Victims Associations through meetings and active coordination to communicate with international stakeholders. This is the beginning of a new phase in CFA’s strategy and commitment to achieve its goals.
CFA believes that cooperation with Syrian and international victims associations is one of the main methods to amplify the voices of all victims of human rights violations in general and the voices of victims of enforced disappearance and torture committed by all actors to the conflict in Syria.
The Caesar Families Association was officially registered in Germany in 2019, as the association strives to accomplish its goals with the effective support of its members.
The association have been communicating with international organizations working on the technologies of DNA. Such technologies helps in matching the DNA of the relatives of victims with the one of the deceased victims in order to help the identification process.
As several families identified their loved ones in the Caesar photos, they joined each other in Berlin in the year 2018 in order to set the corner stone of the establishment of an association of the families of the victims who appeared in the Caesar Photos. This was the first step in their strive to justice, accountability and fighting impunity.
During the founding meeting, the families sat their goals and the foundations necessary for the next phase of official registration of the association.
The goals of Caesar Families Association are:
Children Who were Disappeared or Who Were Born in Captivity. The drama of children who were disappeared in our country, the Argentine Republic, is one of the consequences of the National Reorganization Process enforced by the military dictatorship, which ruled the country between 1976 and 1983.
The Abuelas begin their struggle On 22 October 1977, twelve women found Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. They search for their grandchildren abducted by the dictatorship. Children abducted with their parents or born while their mothers were in captivity. The Abuelas Chela Fontana, Raquel Radío de Marizcurrena, Clara Jurado and Eva Castillo Barrios march with the Madres de Plaza de Mayo.
Abel Madariaga, secretary of Abuelas, locks in an embrace with his son Francisco after 33 years. Francisco’s mother, Silvia Quintela Dallasta, gave birth in captivity in Campo de Mayo. Photo: María Laura Fabrizio.
After the impunity laws were repealed, hundreds of lawsuits over crimes against humanity were resumed all throughout the country. In many of them Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo was the complainant, as in the Courts of Mar del Plata, Rosario, San Juan, Mendoza, Córdoba, and La Plata among other cities. This photo shows the represores of the Fifth Army Corps, headquartered in Bahía Blanca, who were found guilty in the lawsuits over 90 victims, including two pregnant women. Photo: Rolando Andrade
The accused of the crimes related to the systematic plan of appropriation of children –the most representative cause of Abuelas– wait for the delivery of the judgment. From left to right: Jorge Rafael Videla, Reynaldo Bignone, Jorge Omar Riveros, Rubén Franco and Antonio Vañek. At the back, Víctor Gallo and Jorge “el Tigre” Acosta.
8 August 2014 This is the first public photo of Estela Carlotto with her grandson Guido. The picture went around the world. Nowadays the Abuelas keep on searching for hundreds of men and women who still do not know their identities. The struggle continues. Photo: Martín Zabala
Association of families of detainees – disappeared persons
Forced Disappearance in Colombia, began to be applied within the framework of the National Security Doctrine, by the end of the seventies and increased in the eighties, as a repressive and systematic method to eliminate political opponents, as well as a mechanism of repression. The violation of Human Rights in this country has hence been institutionalized.
The first case registered as an enforced disappearance in Colombia and recognized as a repressive method to eliminate political opponents of the regime, dates back to September 9, 1977, with the arrest and disappearance of Omaira Montoya Henao, a 30-year-old bacteriologist, three months pregnant and left-wing militant.
Faced with the pain, anguish and uncertainty of not knowing what was happening with their detained – disappeared loved ones, and faced with the questions of who took them, why were they taken, and above all, where were they, the families of the victims turned to government authorities in the hope of getting answers and with the confidence of the immediate return of their loved ones. On the contrary of what they hopes, they were received with offensive and sarcastic treatment, which not only questioned the occurrence of the events, but also affected the dignity and reputation of the disappeared, assuming a total denial of the occurrence of this repressive practice in Colombia.
Faced with ruthlessness, nonresponse and denial, the families of the detainees – disappeared persons decided to join forces in the search for their loved ones, organizing themselves as the Association of families of detainees – disappeared persons ASFADDES. On February 4, 1983, they took the streets for the first time armed with the photos and the names of their loved ones written on banners. With the pain drawn-out of their throats, the shouted demanding the appearance, alive, of their loved ones and the trial and punishment of the guilty ones. The families were supported by a group of students who were also affected and were suffering because of the absence of their classmates.
Given the lack of political will of the Colombian State to search, investigate and punish those responsible for these practices, and in the absence of judicial tools recognizing forced disappearance as a crime, ASFADDES, took on the mission of criminalizing forced disappearance, initiating a path of insistence and persistence to achieve it.
The criminalization of enforced disappearance has been pushed on through hunger strikes, marches, sit-ins and dialogue with congressmen from different government periods. It was a difficult work due to the indifference of the political class before the tragedy suffered by the families of the disappeared persons whose numbers increased every day, and the alarming impunity with regard to the cases that occurred. After twelve years of fight, July 10, 2000 finally witnessed the passing of law 589.
It is certainly important to note that the fight, resistance and persistence of the families to bring truth to light, achieve justice and recover the memory, for more than 25 years, has been the object of accusations, harassment, persecution and threats, trying to silence them and to stop them from their pursuit to destroy the enemies of life, freedom and justice who abducted those who organized themselves to denounce and demand the appearance of their loved ones alive and the punishment of those responsible. Such as what happened to the members of ASFADDES Angel Jose Quintero and Claudia patricia Monsalve, detained – disappeared on October 6, 2000 in the city of Medellín, and to people who have accompanied and supported this fight such as the lawyers Alirio de Jesús Pedraza Becerra who disappeared on July 4, 1990 in Bogotá and Eduardo Umaña Mendoza, murdered on 18 April in Bogotá.
Association “Movement of Mothers of Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves” (The Association, from this point on), established in 1996 with an office in Sarajevo and a center in Srebrenica, is a non-governmental and non-profit organization in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The mission of the Association is to gather survivors and family members of the victims who have disappeared or been killed in Srebrenica and Žepa during the fall of the UN “Safe haven” in 1995.
The Association works with members in most of the cantons in the Federation of BiH (Sarajevo, Zenica-Doboj, Tuzla), in the smaller BiH entity, Republika Srpska, as well as the Diaspora.
The main reason for the establishment of the Association was due to the desire and needs of the mothers to directly participate in finding out about the fate of those that have disappeared in July of 1995; as well as those that have disappeared in the period between 1992 and 1995 in the regions of Srebrenica, Žepa, Han Pijesak, Rogatica,Vlasenica, Bratunac, Zvornik, Sokolac, Višegrad and Foča. Over the time, the Association’s mission has evolved to include a number of other activities, ranging from their participation in the process of postmortem exhumation, the identification process and burial of victims; to dealing with economic, social, and health issues, as well as education of children of its members.
A court on Wednesday cleared the Netherlands of liability in the deaths of most of the 8,000 Bosnian Muslims slain in the Srebrenica massacre 19 years ago, but did order the nation to compensate the families of more than 300 men turned over to Bosnian Serb forces and later killed. In an emotionally charged hearing at a civil court in The Hague, Presiding Judge Larissa Alwin said Dutch UN peacekeepers should have known that the men deported from the Dutch compound by Bosnian Serb forces on July 13, 1995, would be slain because there was already evidence of the Serbs committing war crimes. “By cooperating in the deportation of these men, Dutchbat acted unlawfully,” Alwin said, referring to the name of the Dutch UN battalion. The victims were among thousands of Muslims killed after Bosnian Serb forces commanded by General Ratko Mladic overran the town of Srebrenica on 11 July in what was to become the bloody climax to the 1992-95 Bosnian war that claimed 100,000 lives.
ِAbout the Victims and Witnesses of Genocide Association:
The mission of the organization is to raise awareness about the war crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war in BiH; to seek truth and justice; to assist in the discovery and identification of mass graves in BiH (both primary and secondary graves); to seek punishment for war crimes; to promote transitional justice mechanisms; to promote human rights and democracy; and to help victims of torture and their families in the educational, health and social spheres.
The association is a non-profit and non-governmental organization in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). It was established on July 11, 2010, during the 15th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, BiH.
Activities
The main activities of the organization are as defined by its mission:
– Monitoring of the processing of war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia / International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, Court of BiH and cantonal courts in BiH.
– Working with children and students of victims of torture.
Researching and documenting war crimes committed during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
– Monitoring the work of institutions working on issues related to war crimes and human rights.
– Monitoring violations of human rights in BiH.
– Meeting regularly with victims and survivors as well as representatives of institutions working on war crimes and human rights.
– Organizing international conferences and publishing proceedings; and
Producing documentary films as well as other audio-video projects.
Projects
The documentation of human and material damage cause from 1992 to 1995 in the Municipality of Bihać (2013.-2015.)
Accomplishments
– The adaption of the law on the rights of victims of torture in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2015).
– 20 stipends for students whose parents are victims of torture (2012.-2016.).
– Compensation for victims of torture in BiH and Serbia.
– The initiation of cases against members of Serbian Crisis Headquarters established during the 1992-95 war in BiH.
– The adoptions of the Resolution at the Parliament of Federation of BiH which calls for the adoption of a law against the denial of genocide, holocaust and other war crimes (2019.).