Enforced disappearances and abductions

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) writes to inform you that another political activist, Orly Marcellana, narrowly avoided an attempt on his life on 10 May 2007. Marcellana is the husband of the late Eden Marcellana, a human rights activist murdered four years ago in Naujan, Mindoro Oriental. In another development, the complaint […]

[NOTICE: To facilitate your intervention of the urgent appeals issued by the AHRC, we have developed a new automatic letter-sending system using the “button” below. However, in this appeal, we could not include e-mail addresses of all the Philippines authorities. We encourage you to send your appeal letters via fax or post to those people. Fax numbers and […]

Dear friends, The Administrative Court in Thailand has turned down a petition challenging the decision of the Royal Thai Police and its commissioner general to reappoint the five policemen who are allegedly involved in the disappearance of lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit (UP-044-2007). The petition was filed by Somchai’s wife, Angkhana Neelaphaijit, who was also a joint-plaintiff […]

The Asian Human Rights Commission sent an Urgent Appeal on February 26, 2007 (UA-063-2007) to several government authorities to which a reply was received on May 7, 2007 from you as the Additional Secretary for the Ministry of Defence, Public Security, Law & Order dated April 3, 2007 (SMOD/703/HUMAN RIGHTS). The AHRC’s Urgent Appeal concerned […]

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) previously reported on an alleged killing of a young man in Kalasin, northeast Thailand, by the police (UA-136-2007). We have so far documented over 20 similar killings and forced disappearances by the same group of officers. In this update we give details of three more of their […]

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information regarding the unlawful arrest and brutal murder of Mr. Marsudi Tri Wijaya, for reasons that are as yet unknown, allegedly by Police Officers of the Medan District Police on 11 April 2007. None of the perpetrators have been arrested to date, and there is […]

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received an updated list of persons disappeared in Sri Lanka from the Civil Monitoring Commission (CMC), a local human rights organization in Sri Lanka. The AHRC has previously published the list of name of 81 disappeared persons documented by the CMC (See further: UA-113-2007). The updated list […]

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information from its local partner the Human Rights Alerts (HRA), a human rights organisation based in Imphal, of Manipur state, India regarding the abduction and murder of two persons in Thoubal district in Manipur. The local people allege that the unidentified armed persons responsible for […]

The issue of enforced disappearances is among the highlighted topics of the discussion of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. While about 1,000 disappearances were reported in 2006, already by April, 2007 around 300 cases have been cited. A situation of this magnitude has found some response from the United States where Ambassador Richard Boucher, […]

CIVIL MONITORING COMMISSION (CMC) Monitoring involuntary Disappearances, Abductions, Extra Judicial Killings, Extortionsand Arbitrary arrests and detentions in Sri Lanka #72 Bankshall Street Colombo 11 Sri Lanka  P.O.Box 803 Colombo Phone 11-2473511 Fax 11-2435961 E -mail: civilmonitorlanka@gmail.com (Chairman) Sirithunga Jayasooriya (Convener) Mano Ganesan MP (Members) Luxman Kiriella MP,  Suresh Premachandran MP Dear Sir/Madam, SUBJECT: First of the […]

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received a list of name of 81 persons who disappeared between August 2006 to 20 March 2007. This list was documented by the Civil Monitoring Commission. We set out below names and dates and places of the disappearance of these persons. The AHRC is concerned that […]

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is forwarding an announcement about a programme to be held at the National Human Rights Commission in Bangkok this Wednesday, March 28, on forced disappearances in Thailand. We encourage anyone to attend if they are able to do so. To see details of some forced disappearances in […]

The following is a joint statement by the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (Forum-Asia), Asian Legal Resource Centre, International NGO Forum on Indonesia Development (INFID), and Pax Romana, in cooperation with the Asian Federation Against Disappearances (AFAD) at the 4th Session of the Human Rights Council on Thursday, March 22, 2007: We would […]

Dear friends The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information from a reliable source (name withheld for security reasons), regarding the cases of abductions of 15 innocent civilians in Trincomalee and Colombo since September 2006 to February 2007. All of the victims are still missing and there have not been taken any effective investigation […]

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission has received information from a reliable source that a number of students of the University of Jaffna have been murdered, arbitrarily arrested and disappeared since August 2006. Due to the security situation some classes had been cancelled until 19 February 2007. It has been allegedly reported that military […]

Dear friends The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information regarding the kidnapping and gang-rape of a 15 year-old-girl by more than a dozen attackers from Town Layyah in Punjab province beginning on 30 January 2007. The heinous crime, which was committed over a four-day period, has still not been registered by the police […]

The acting police chief of Thailand on Monday, 12 March 2007 made a verbal attack on . The Manager online newspaper quoted Pol. Gen. Seripisuth Themiyavet as saying that Angkhana should be taught to “shut up” about the case of her husband, lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit, who was abducted by police three years ago and whose […]

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has requested the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to permit the construction of a small marker at the site of the 12 March 2004 abduction of human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit, who after three years remains missing (AHRC-OL-010-2007). As noted in the letter to the governor of Bangkok, the making of […]

You will be familiar with the case of Somchai Neelaphaijit, the human rights lawyer who was forcibly disappeared in Bangkok on the night of 12 March 2004 after he had publicly alleged that five of his clients were tortured. The Criminal Court, former prime minister and head of the Council for National Security have all […]

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is calling your attention to the following list of the people who have been allegedly killed, arrested and abducted since January 2006 in Sri Lanka. We have received the information from reliable source of Sri Lanka, however the identity of this source cannot be revealed for security […]