- Category: Statements
14 August 2019: Following serious concerns expressed by the UN Committee against Torture (CAT) about torture in Bangladesh, seven human rights organizations call on the Bangladeshi government to recognize the magnitude of the problem and address and implement the nearly 90 recommendations made by the UN body.
- Category: Statements
Accountability Watch Committee (AWC) expresses its serious concerns over the recent acts of the Indian government to transform the federal status of the northwestern state of Kashmir into the Union Territory in contravention to the Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. Established during the princely state’s accession into the Indian state approximately 70 years ago, this Article guarantees some special privileges to the people of Kashmir.
- Category: Statements
Statement: SOUTH ASIA FORUM FOR HUMAN RIGHTS (SAFHR)
Article 370 has been abrogated by a Presidential order and with it democratic India’s colossal betrayal of 13 million of its citizens. The historic state of Jammu and Kashmir has been annihilated. The RSS, BJP and the Hindu right wing parties and organisations have been continuously calling for the abrogation of Article 370. Hindu right wing nationalists have called this move of the government as the “final solution”. Clearly it is not as evinced by the fact that 8,000 paramilitary troops were being airlifted to the Kashmir valley as the Home Minister announced the abrogation of Article 370. Already 35,000 additional troops have been sent to Kashmir over the past three days. This is in addition to more than half a million army men and para-military forces of the Indian state already deployed in Kashmir.
- Category: Statements
Manila: Today, the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) remembers Masood Janjua, a businessman from Pakistan who was disappeared on 30th July 2005, along with his friend while they were travelling in a bus to Peshawar. Masood’s disappearance 14 years ago was the first recorded and documented case of disappearance in Pakistan that led to a movement against enforced disappearances in the country.
- Category: Statements
Manila: The Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) stands in solidarity with victims and survivors of torture all across the world today on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.
The United Nations condemns torture as one of the vilest acts perpetrated by human beings on their fellow human beings. Torture is one of the most abhorrent forms of human rights violations. It is aimed at utterly destroying the victim’s sense of dignity.Torture is a contemptible act that causes extreme and irreversible psychological and physical damages on the individual.
- Category: IDD-AFAD-MO
May 26-31, 2019: Every last week of May, the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) joins the global community in observing the International Week of the Disappeared. This year, AFAD remembers those who have been forcibly disappeared and strengthens its resolve to create a world free from enforced disappearances.
- Category: IDD-AFAD-MO
Dhaka/Manila, 26 May 2019: The International Week of the Disappeared is observed in many countries every last week of May. In commemorating this remarkable week, Odhikar and AFAD remember and pay tribute to victims of enforced disappearance and their families across the globe, including Bangladesh. Like many countries in Asia, enforced disappearances have almost become a regular phenomenon in Bangladesh, and a highly visible and worrying number of enforced disappearances have been committed. A large number of victims of enforced disappearance are political activists belonging to the opposition parties. Some are student activists, non-partisan critical voices, intellectual figures, academics, and journalists. Some return alive, many never at all.
- Category: Statements
The Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) promotes the unprecedented report on the use of torture in Indian administered Kashmir by the Indian armed forces released by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) and Jammu & Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) on 20th of May 2019. The report titled, ‘Torture: Indian State’s Instrument of Control in Indian Administered Jammu and Kashmir’ is a very important piece of work.