APDP Stages Sit-In To Seek Whereabouts Of Disappeared

SRINAGAR — The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), Monday, held a sit-in protest in Srinagar to demand the whereabouts of their relatives who have allegedly disappeared in the custody of government forces.

Holding banners and pictures of their disappeared kin, scores of family members of disappeared persons assembled at Press Enclave to demand their whereabouts.

The sit-in was staged on the occasion of Human Rights day observed on December 10 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948.

Speaking on the occasion, APDP chairperson, Parveena Ahanger, said the victim families won’t relent until they get their disappeared children back.

“We are fighting from last thirty years, we will keep fight for more twenty years. We will continue this fight but we won’t stop protesting the disappearances of our loved ones,” Ahanger said.

She said the relatives of missing persons don’t want anything. “We don’t need money or employment. We only want our children back. We will keep protesting unless we get the answers where our dear ones are,” she said.

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The APDP said that the state and central governments have failed to trace  out their family members who were  subjected to enforced disappearance since 1989 across the state.

The family members of disappeared youth castigated the successive governments for being indifferent towards their pain and agony. “Neither National Conference nor PDP did anything to trace our missing loved ones,” said an elderly woman,  whose son she said was picked by Border Security Forces during a crackdown 18 years ago.

Wearing white head bands with names of disappeared people written in black, the relatives participated in APDP’s sit-in program to draw attention of the government to seek whereabouts of their loved ones, who have “vanished, presumed dead or imprisoned without trial or record.”

 The APDP alleged that the “ a large number of people have been subjected to enforced disappearances by the Indian forces and their related agencies from their homes and were even lifted from streets and roads.” The rights body vowed to “continue” its struggle for “truth, justice and accountability till both the state and central governments accept their demand of impartial probe into the enforced disappearances and custodial killings.”

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