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89-720: The Armed Forces of Honduras were created through article 44, subsection 4 of the First Constitution of the Legislative Chamber in 1825, with the First Supreme Head of State being the Attorney Dionisio de Herrera , for which, they ordered the effective birth of the Honduran army in dated December 11, 1825 and for its greater mobility, it was divided into battalions with the name of each of the seven departments Comayagua

178-628: A car bomb in Buenos Aires , Argentina , in 1974. A year later, the deaths of 119 opponents abroad were claimed as the product of infighting between Marxist factions, the DINA setting up a disinformation campaign to propagate this thesis, Operation Colombo . The campaign was legitimized and supported by the leading newspaper in Chile, El Mercurio . Other prominent victims of Operation Condor included, among thousands of less famous persons, Juan José Torres ,

267-602: A crime against humanity , not subject to a statute of limitations , in international criminal law . On December 20, 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance . In international human rights law , disappearances at the hands of the state has been labelled as "enforced" or "forced disappearances" since

356-484: A United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) communication base in Panama . Pinochet justified these operations as being necessary in order to save the country from communism . Some political scientists have ascribed the relative bloodiness of the coup to the stability of the existing democratic system, which required extreme action to overturn. Some of the most famous cases of human rights violations occurred during

445-531: A convention within the framework of the United Nations. This was followed by the deliberations of the 1981 Paris Colloquium submitted by Louis Joinet in the form of a draft subcommittee in August 1988. Several governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations responded to the invitation of Secretary-General Kofi Annan to provide comments and observations to the project. On 20 December 2006,

534-511: A law degree and came in contact with the liberal ideas of the French Revolution . He was a tutor of his nephew, General Morazán. In 1820 he occupied his first public office, as secretary of the town government of Tegucigalpa . On 16 September 1824 he became the first head of state of Honduras, after the independence of Central America from Spain and from Mexico. Colonel José Justo Milla was his vice-head of state. During his term he decreed

623-724: A press conference "They are just that… desaparecidos . They are not alive, neither are they dead. They are just missing". It is thought that between 1976 and 1983 in Argentina, up to 30,000 people (8,960 named cases, according to the official report by the CONADEP ) were killed and in many cases disappeared. In an originally classified cable first published by John Dinges in 2004, the Argentine 601st Intelligence Battalion, which started counting victims in 1975, in mid-1978 estimated that 22,000 persons had been killed or "disappeared". Since 2010, under

712-506: A radar station operates at: The Navy is a small force dealing with coastal and riverine security. The Navy has 71 patrol boats, interceptors and landing craft units. The Honduran navy has 4 naval bases: Additionally, the Honduran navy has the following unit and schools: According to a statement in July 2009 by a legal counsel of the Honduras military, Colonel Herberth Bayardo Inestroza, part of

801-573: Is estimated that 500 babies born in this way were given for informal adoption to families with close ties to the military. Eventually, many of the captives were heavily drugged and loaded onto aircraft, from which they were thrown alive while in flight over the Atlantic Ocean in " death flights " ( vuelos de la muerte ) to leave no trace of their death. Without any bodies, the government could deny any knowledge of their whereabouts and accusations that they had been killed. The forced disappearances were

890-522: Is working towards universal ratification of the convention. Disappearances work on two levels: not only do they silence opponents and critics who have disappeared, but they also create uncertainty and fear in the wider community, silencing others they think would oppose and criticize. Disappearances entail the violation of many fundamental human rights declared in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) . For

979-587: The Algerian Civil War , which began in 1992 as militant Islamist guerrillas attacked the military government that had annulled an Islamic Salvation Front victory, thousands of people were forcibly disappeared. Disappearances continued up to the late 1990s, but thereafter dropped off sharply with the decline in violence in 1997. Some of the disappeared were kidnapped or killed by the guerrillas but others are presumed to have been taken by state security forces under Mohamed Mediène . This latter group has become

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1068-567: The Awami League regime, at least 500 people – most of whom are opposition leaders and activists – have been declared disappeared in Bangladesh by the state security forces . According to the report of a domestic human rights organization, 82 people have disappeared from January to September 2014. After the disappearances, at least 39 of the victims were found dead while others remained missing. On 25 June 2010, an opposition leader Chowdhury Alam

1157-822: The Chilean military coup of September 11 , 1973. The report of the Working Group to Investigate the Situation of Human Rights in that country, which was submitted to the United Nations Commission on February 4, 1976, illustrated such a case for the first time, when Alfonso Chanfreau , of French origin, was arrested in July 1974 at his home in Santiago de Chile. Earlier, in February 1975, the UN Commission on Human Rights had used

1246-683: The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950, became a single permanent and binding court for all the Member States of the Council of Europe. Although the European Convention does not contain any express prohibition of the practice of enforced disappearance, the Court dealt with several cases of disappearance in 1993 in the context of the conflict between

1335-1107: The General Francisco Morazan Military Academy and the School of the Americas . In January 2011, the General Rene Arnoldo Osorio Canales, former Head of the Presidential Honor Guard, was appointed Commander. As of 2012 the Honduran Military has the highest military expenditures of all Central America . They have 52,225 troops in their Army, they have 16,500 troops in their Air Force, and 5,300 troops in their Navy. Dionisio de Herrera José Dionisio de la Trinidad de Herrera y Díaz del Valle (9 October 1781 in Choluteca , Honduras – 13 June 1850 in San Vicente, El Salvador )

1424-669: The Institute des droits de l'homme du Barreau de Paris (Institute of Human Rights of the Paris Law School) organized a high-level symposium to promote an international convention on disappearances, followed by several draft declarations and conventions proposed by the Argentine League for Human Rights, FEDEFAM at the annual congress of Peru in 1982 or the Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo from Bogotá in 1988. In that same year,

1513-726: The Inter-American Court of Human Rights promulgated the first convictions declaring the State of Honduras guilty of violating its duty to respect and guarantee the rights to life, liberty, and personal integrity of the disappeared Angel Manfredo Velásquez Rodríguez . Rodríguez was a Honduran student kidnapped in September 1981 in Tegucigalpa by heavily armed civilians connected with the Honduran Armed Forces and Saúl Godínez Cruz. Since

1602-588: The State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus (KGB) had had them under constant surveillance, the official investigation announced that the case could not be solved. The investigation of the disappearance of journalist Dzmitry Zavadski in 2000 has also yielded no results. Copies of a report by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe , which linked senior Belarusian officials to

1691-709: The US and to the extradition of Michael Townley , a US citizen who worked for the DINA and had organized Letelier's assassination. Other targeted victims, who survived assassination attempts, included Christian-Democrat politician Bernardo Leighton , who barely escaped an assassination attempt in Rome in 1975 by the Italian neo-fascist terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie (the assassination attempt seriously injured Leighton and his wife, Anita Fresno, leaving her permanently disabled); Carlos Altamirano ,

1780-507: The Vienna Declaration and Program of Action . For example, the practice is specifically addressed by the OAS 's Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons. There is also evidence that enforced disappearances occur systematically during armed conflict, such as Nazi Germany's Night and Fog program, which constitutes war crimes. In February 1980, the United Nations established

1869-651: The " Combate del Obrajuelo ", in San Miguel , El Salvador. In 1865 the first attempt was made to organize a Naval Force with its respective regulations; however, the cost of this service made it unsustainable; However, there were several attempts to reactivate the idea and one of them was carried out by Doctor Policarpo Bonilla , who ordered the construction of the Tatumbla steamship in the Kiel shipyard, Germany on November 22, 1895, and then in 1896 respectively, General Manuel Bonilla had

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1958-513: The 'Hornet built. While he administered Honduras, the Doctor and General Don Tiburcio Carias Andino also ordered the construction of the steamers Búfalo and El Tigre. On January 1, 1881, the first Military Code of the Honduran army was issued, a legal instrument to govern its own organization. During the twentieth century, Honduran military leaders frequently became presidents, either through elections or by coups d'état . General Tiburcio Carías Andino

2047-503: The 1980s in El Salvador and Nicaragua led Honduras – with US assistance – to expand its armed forces considerably, laying particular emphasis on its air force , which came to include a squadron of US-provided F-5s . The military unit Battalion 316 carried out political assassinations and the torture of suspected political opponents of the government during this same period. Battalion members received training and support from

2136-581: The Chilean military's seizure of power on 11 September 1973, the military junta led by the then commander-in-chief Augusto Pinochet banned all the leftist parties that had constituted the democratically elected president Salvador Allende 's UP coalition. All other parties were placed in "indefinite recess", and later banned outright. The regime's violence was directed not only against dissidents, but also against their families and other civilians. The Rettig Report concluded 2,279 persons who disappeared during

2225-573: The Citizen , formulated on August 26, 1789, in France by the authorities that emerged from the French Revolution , where it was already stated in Articles 7 and 12: Art. 7. No person may be charged, detained, or imprisoned except in cases determined by the law and in the manner prescribed therein. Those requesting, facilitating, executing, or executing arbitrary orders must be punished... Art. 12. The guarantee of

2314-574: The Declaration included as the primary obligation of States to enact specific criminal legislation, unlike the Convention against Torture, the principle of universal jurisdiction was not established nor was it agreed that the provisions of the Declaration and the recommendations of the Working Group were legally binding so that only a few states took concrete steps to comply with them. The United Nations Declaration, despite its shortcomings, served to awaken

2403-531: The French expert in the then Sub-commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities , Louis Joinet, prepared the draft text to be adopted in 1992 by the General Assembly with the title Declaration on the Protection of All Persons Against enforced disappearances. The definition presented was based on the one traditionally used by the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. Although

2492-640: The Honduran Armed Forces. The abolition of the draft has created staffing gaps in the now all-volunteer armed forces. The military is now far below its authorized strength, and further reductions are expected. In January 1999, the Constitution was amended to abolish the position of military Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, thus codifying civilian authority over the Military. Since 2002, soldiers have been involved in crime prevention and law enforcement, patrolling

2581-504: The Honduran military together with other government security forces were allegedly responsible for thousands of allegedly arbitrary detentions and for several forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions of opponents to the de facto government, including members of the Democratic Unification Party . However, evidence about these actions has yet to be provided and there has been some questioning in local media about

2670-705: The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to monitor compliance by states parties with their obligations, issued in March 1982 and July 1983, two sentences condemning the State of Uruguay for the cases of Eduardo Bleier, a former member of the Communist Party of Uruguay, residing in Hungary and Israel, disappeared after his arrest in 1975 in Montevideo , and Elena Quinteros Almeida, missing since her arrest at

2759-512: The Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel had made an international appeal that, with the support of the French government, obtained the response of the General Assembly in the form of resolution 33/173 of 20 December 1978, which specifically referred to "missing persons" and requested the Commission on Human Rights to make appropriate recommendations. On 6 March 1979, the Commission authorized

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2848-511: The Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance , adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 20, 2006, states that the widespread or systematic practice of enforced disappearances constitutes a crime against humanity. It gives victims' families the right to seek reparations and to demand the truth about the disappearance of their loved ones. The convention provides the right not to be subjected to enforced disappearance, as well as

2937-547: The Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court , enforced disappearances constitute a crime against humanity when committed as a part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population with the knowledge of the attack. The Rome Statute defines enforced disappearances differently than international human rights law: [T]he arrest, detention or abduction of persons by, or with

3026-712: The Turkish security forces and members or supporters of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) from the Kurdish region to the southeast of Turkey. Another body providing the basis for the legal definition of the crime of enforced disappearance was the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina , a human rights tribunal established under Annex 6 of the Dayton Peace Agreement of 14 December 1995 which, although it

3115-685: The United Nations General Assembly adopted the text of the International Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons after more than 25 years of development and was signed in Paris on 6 February 2007 at a ceremony to which representatives of the 53 first signatory countries attended and in which 20 of them immediately ratified it. On 19 April 2007, the Commission on Human Rights updated the list of countries that ratified

3204-707: The United States Central Intelligence Agency , in Honduras , at U.S. military bases and in Chile during the presidency of the dictator Augusto Pinochet . Amnesty International estimated that at least 184 people "disappeared" from 1980 to 1992 in Honduras, most likely due to actions of the Honduran military. The resolution of the civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and across-the-board budget cuts made in all ministries, has brought reduced funding for

3293-407: The Venezuelan Embassy in Montevideo in June 1976, in an incident that led to the suspension of diplomatic relations between the two countries. In its judgments, the Committee relied on a number of articles of the International Covenant, in particular, those relating to "the right to liberty and personal security", "the right of detainees to be treated humanely and with respect to the inherent dignity of

3382-443: The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, "the first United Nations human rights thematic mechanism to be established with a universal mandate." Its main task "is to assist families in determining the fate or whereabouts of their family members who have reportedly disappeared." In August 2014, the working group reported 43,250 unresolved cases of disappearances in 88 different states. The International Convention for

3471-527: The actual perpetrators, suggesting that they could actually be related to disputes within the leftists organizations themselves. The Honduran Army ( Spanish : Ejército de Honduras , lit.   'Army of Honduras') is the land service branch of the Armed Forces of Honduras. The FAH operates from four air bases located at: With the exception of Soto Cano Air Base, all other air bases operate as dual civil and military aviation facilities. Additionally, three air stations are located at: Also

3560-468: The appointment as experts of Dr. Felix Ermacora and Waleed M. Sadi, who later resigned due to political pressure, to study the question of the fate of disappearances in Chile , issuing a report to the General Assembly on 21 November 1979. Felix Ermacora's report became a reference point on the legal issue of crime by including a series of conclusions and recommendations which were later collected by international organizations and bodies. Meanwhile, during

3649-421: The authorization, support or acquiescence of, a State or a political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the fate or whereabouts of those persons, to remove them from the protection of the law for a prolonged period of time The crime of forced disappearance begins with the history of the rights stated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of

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3738-583: The capital, Tegucigalpa, Choluteca, Olancho, Yoro, Gracias and Santa Bárbara that were in charge of strategically and tactically covering order and defense of the state, under French military doctrine. In 1831 the Military School was created with a seat at the San Francisco Barracks, and Colonel Narciso Benítez of Colombian origin was appointed director; From this school graduated: Francisco Morazán , José Antonio Márquez , Diego Vigil , Liberato Moncada , Joaquín Rivera and José Santos Guardiola who were presidents of Honduras, among others. The first weaponry used

3827-414: The cases of disappearances, were confiscated. In December 2019, Deutsche Welle published a documentary film in which Yury Garavski, a former member of a special unit of the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs , confirmed that it was his unit which had arrested, taken away, and murdered Zecharanka and that they later did the same with Viktar Hanchar and Anatol Krassouski. Almost immediately after

3916-437: The commission and governments on the improvement of the protection afforded to miss persons and their families and to prevent cases of enforced disappearance. Since then, different causes began to be developed in various international legal bodies, whose sentences served to establish a specific jurisprudence on enforced disappearance. The United Nations Human Rights Committee , established in 1977 in accordance with article 28 of

4005-440: The convention, which included 59 nations. Since the establishment of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (CHR) in 1980, the crime of enforced disappearance has proved to be a global problem, affecting many countries on five continents. It is the subject of a special follow-up by the HRC which regularly publishes reports on its complaint and situation, as well as

4094-403: The court order: "In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us." He said the decision was taken by the military leadership "in order to avoid bloodshed". Following the 2009 ouster of the president,

4183-525: The crimes. During Argentina 's Dirty War and Operation Condor , many alleged political dissidents were abducted or illegally detained and kept in clandestine detention centers such as Navy Petty-Officers School or "ESMA", where they were questioned, tortured, and almost always killed. There were about 500 clandestine detention camps , including those of Garaje Azopardo and Orletti. These places of torture, located mostly in Buenos Aires , contributed up to 30,000 desaparecidos, or disappeared persons, to

4272-466: The demands for the government initiatives to probe such disappearances, investigations into such cases were absent. In 1999 opposition leaders Yury Zacharanka and Viktar Hanchar , as well as his business associate Anatol Krasouski, disappeared. Hanchar and Krasouski disappeared the same day of a broadcast on state television in which President Alexander Lukashenko ordered the chiefs of his security services to crack down on "opposition scum". Although

4361-415: The dictatorship to find the children born in captivity during the Dirty War, and later to determine the culprits of crimes against humanity and promote their trial and sentencing. Some 500 children are estimated to have been illegally given for adoption; 120 cases had been confirmed by DNA tests as of 2016 . The term desaparecidos was used by de facto President General Jorge Rafael Videla , who said in

4450-416: The disappeared person, these include the right to liberty , the right to personal security and humane treatment (including freedom from torture), the right to a fair trial , to legal counsel and to equal protection under the law, and the right of presumption of innocence . Their families, who often spend the rest of their lives searching for information on the disappeared, are also victims. According to

4539-444: The early period: in October 1973, at least 70 people were killed throughout the country by the Caravan of Death . Charles Horman , a journalist from the US , "disappeared", as did Víctor Olea Alegría , a member of the Socialist Party , and many others, in 1973. Mathematician Boris Weisfeiler is thought to have disappeared near Colonia Dignidad , a German colony founded by Nazi Christian minister Paul Schäfer in Parral , which

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4628-423: The elite Honduran Military generals were opposed to President Manuel Zelaya , whom the Military had removed from Honduras via a military Coup d'état , because of his left-wing politics . Inestroza stated, "It would be difficult for us [the military], with our training, to have a relationship with a leftist government. That's impossible." The current Head of the Armed Forces is Carlos Antonio Cuéllar , graduate of

4717-436: The event, and events preceding and following the removal of Zelaya from Honduras. The military's chief lawyer, Colonel Herberth Bayardo Inestroza Membreño, made public statements regarding the removal of Zelaya. On June 30, he showed a detention order, apparently signed June 26 by a Supreme Court judge, which ordered the armed forces to detain the president. Colonel Inestroza later stated that deporting Zelaya did not comply with

4806-431: The exhortations of non-governmental organizations and family organizations of the victims, in the same resolution of 31 October 1979, the General Assembly of the OAS issued a statement, after receiving pressure from the Argentine government, in which only the states in which persons had disappeared were urged to refrain from enacting or enforcing laws that might hinder the investigation of such disappearances. Shortly after

4895-465: The express definition of the crime of enforced disappearance had not yet been defined, the Court had to rely on different articles of the American Convention on Human Rights of 1969. Other rulings issued by the Inter-American Court condemned Colombia , Guatemala (for several cases including the call of the "street children"), Peru , and Bolivia . In Europe, the European Court of Human Rights , established in 1959, in accordance with article 38 of

4984-521: The first legally binding instrument on the subject, and entered into force on 28 March 1996, after its ratification by eight countries: Argentina, Panama, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Venezuela, Bolivia and Guatemala. In view of the meager success of the United Nations Declaration, a non-binding instrument that could only marginally influence the practice of enforced disappearances, a number of non-governmental organizations and several experts proposed strengthening protection against disappearances, adopting

5073-399: The first territorial subdivisions of Honduras, creating the departments of Comayagua , Tegucigalpa , Santa Bárbara , Yoro , Olancho and Choluteca (department) . He also promulgated the first constitution of the country (state), on 11 December 1825. The government of Herrera was overthrown on 10 May 1827 in a coup d'état led by Colonel Milla and aided by Honduran Conservatives. Herrera

5162-430: The former President of Bolivia , assassinated in Buenos Aires on 2 June 1976; Carmelo Soria , a UN diplomat working for the CEPAL , assassinated in July 1976; and Orlando Letelier , a former Chilean ambassador to the United States and minister in Allende's cabinet, assassinated after his release from internment and exile in Washington D.C. by a car bomb on 21 September 1976. This led to strained relations with

5251-415: The founding of the first humanitarian organizations known as the Red Cross in 1859, and the first international typification of abuses and crimes in the form of the 1864 Geneva Convention. In 1946, after the Second World War , the Nuremberg trials brought to public attention to the Nacht und Nebel decree, one of the most prominent antecedents of the crime of enforced disappearance. The trials included

5340-435: The human being" and "the right of every human being to the recognition of his juridical personality", while in the case of Quinteros, it was solved for the first time in favor of the relatives considered equally victims. In 1983, the Organization of American States (OAS) declared by its resolution 666 XIII-0/83 that any enforced disappearance should be described as a crime against humanity. A few years later, in 1988 and 1989,

5429-406: The intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law. Often, forced disappearance implies murder whereby a victim is abducted , may be illegally detained , and is often tortured during interrogation, ultimately killed, and the body disposed of secretly. The party committing the murder has plausible deniability as there is no evidence of the victim's death. Enforced disappearance

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5518-565: The leader of the Chilean Socialist Party, targeted for murder in 1975 by Pinochet; Volodia Teitelboim , writer and member of the Communist Party ; Pascal Allende , the nephew of Salvador Allende and president of the MIR , who escaped an assassination attempt in Costa Rica in March 1976; and US Congressman Edward Koch , who received death threats and was the potential assassination target by DINA and Uruguayan intelligence officers for his denunciation of Operation Condor. Furthermore, according to current investigations, Eduardo Frei Montalva ,

5607-455: The military dictatorship were killed for political reasons or as a result of political violence, and approximately 31,947 were tortured according to the later Valech Report , while 1,312 were exiled. The latter were chased all over the world by the intelligence agencies . In Latin America , this was made under the auspices of Operation Condor , a combined operation between the intelligence agencies of various South American countries, assisted by

5696-415: The military junta's attempt to silence the opposition and break the determination of the guerrillas. Missing people who are presumed to have been murdered in this and other ways are today referred to as "the disappeared" ( los desaparecidos ). Activist groups Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo were formed in 1977 by mothers and grandmothers of the "disappeared" victims of

5785-408: The most controversial. Their exact numbers remain disputed, but the government has acknowledged a figure of just over 6,000 disappeared, now presumed dead. The war claimed a total toll of 150,000–200,000 lives. In 2005 a controversial amnesty law was approved in a referendum. It granted financial compensation to families of the "disappeared", but also effectively ended the police investigations into

5874-440: The obligation of international cooperation, both in the suppression of the practice and in dealing with humanitarian aspects related to the crime. The convention establishes a Committee on Enforced Disappearances, which will be charged with important and innovative functions of monitoring and protection at an international level. Currently, an international campaign called the International Coalition against Enforced Disappearances

5963-414: The office. In 1838 he retired from politics, working as a teacher in the city of San Vicente, El Salvador. He remained there until his death in 1850. Forced disappearance An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance ) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person with the support or acquiescence of a state followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate or whereabouts with

6052-721: The official UN report of 2009, of the 82 countries where the cases of missing persons were identified, the largest number (more than 1000) transmitted were: Iraq (16,544), Sri Lanka (12,226), Argentina (3,449), Guatemala (3,155), Peru (3,009), Algeria (2,939), El Salvador (2,661) and Colombia (1,235). Other countries with numerous cases under denunciation (between 1000 and 100) are: Chile (907), China (116), Congo (114), Ethiopia (119), Philippines (780), Honduras (207), India (430), Indonesia (165), Iran (532), Lebanon (320), Morocco (268), Mexico (392), Nepal (672), Nicaragua (234), Russian Federation (478), Sudan , Yemen (155) and East Timor (504). During

6141-479: The overall count in the Dirty War. The victims would be shipped to places like a garage or basement and tortured for multiple days. Many of the disappeared were people who were considered to be a political or ideological threat to the military junta . The Argentine military justified torture to obtain intelligence and saw the disappearances as a way to curb political dissidence. Abducted pregnant women were kept captive until they gave birth, then often killed. It

6230-441: The previous report of 2007, the number of cases had been 51,531 and affected 79 countries. Many of the countries in the cases are affected internally by violent conflicts, while in other countries the practice of repressive policies towards political opponents is denounced. In other countries, generally in the western and European hemispheres, there are still historical cases that remain unresolved and constitute permanent crimes. In

6319-412: The regional project for the American continent commissioned by the OAS General Assembly in 1987, which, although drafted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 1988, was subjected to lengthy discussions and modifications that resulted in their stagnation. In June 1994, the OAS General Assembly finally approved the Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons, which would be

6408-524: The report by Félix Ermacora, the UN Commission on Human Rights considered one of the proposals made and decided on 29 February 1980 to set up the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, the first of the so-called thematic mechanisms of the commission and the most important body of the United Nations that has since been dealing with the problem of disappearances in cases that can be attributed to governments, as well as issuing recommendations to

6497-414: The response and action of the governments concerned. The report of the 2009 Working Group recorded a total of 53,232 cases transmitted by the Working Group to Governments since their inception in 1980 and affecting 82 states. The number of cases that are still under study due to lack of clarification, closed or discontinuous cases amounts to 42,600. Since 2004 the Working Group had clarified 1,776 cases. In

6586-412: The right for the relatives of the disappeared person to know the truth and ultimate fate of the disappeared person. The convention contains several provisions concerning the prevention, investigation, and sanctioning of this crime. It also contains provisions about the rights of victims and their relatives, and the wrongful removal of children born during their captivity. The convention further sets forth

6675-486: The rights of man and of the citizen needs a public force. This force is therefore instituted for the benefit of all, and not for the particular utility of those who are in charge of it. Throughout the nineteenth century, along with the technological advancements applied to wars that led to increased mortality among combatants and damage to civilian populations, movements for humanitarian awareness in Western societies resulted in

6764-551: The same year, the General Assembly of the Organization of American States adopted a resolution on Chile on 31 October, in which it declared that the practice of disappearances was "an affront to the conscience of the hemisphere", after having sent in September a mission of the Inter-American Commission to Argentina , which confirmed the systematic practice of enforced disappearances by successive military juntas. Despite

6853-538: The streets of the major cities alongside the national police. On 28 June 2009, in the context of a constitutional crisis , the Military, acting on orders of the Supreme Court of Justice, arrested the President Manuel Zelaya , after which they forcibly removed elected President Zelaya from Honduras. See the article 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis regarding claims regarding legitimacy and illegitimacy of

6942-617: The terms "persons unaccounted for" or "persons whose disappearance was not justified," in a resolution that dealt with the disappearances in Cyprus as a result of the armed conflict that resulted in the division of the island, as part of the two General Assembly resolutions adopted in December 1975 with respect to Cyprus and Chile. In 1977, the General Assembly of the United Nations again discussed disappearances in its resolution 32/118. By then,

7031-516: The testimony of 20 of those persons considered a threat to the security of Nazi Germany and whom the regime detained and condemned to death in the occupied territories of Europe. However, the executions were not carried out immediately; at one time, the people were deported to Germany and imprisoned at locations such as the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp , where they ended up disappearing and no information about their whereabouts and fate

7120-668: The time that enforced disappearances were crimes against humanity, the International Criminal Tribunal in Nuremberg found him guilty of war crimes. Since 1974, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights have been the first international human rights bodies to react to the phenomenon of disappearances, following complaints made in connection with

7209-605: Was a Liberal Honduran politician, head of state of Honduras from 1824 to 1827 and head of state of Nicaragua from 1830 to 1833. During his terms, Honduras and Nicaragua were states within the Federal Republic of Central America . Herrera was an uncle of the Liberal Central American general Francisco Morazán . From a land-owning family, Herrera studied at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala , where he earned

7298-575: Was arrested by the state police and remained missing since then. His abduction was later denied by the law enforcing agencies. On 17 April 2012, another prominent leader, Ilyas Ali , of the main opposition parties Bangladesh Nationalist Party disappeared by unknown armed personnel. The incident received much media coverage. Before the controversial national election of 2014 , at least 19 opposition men were picked up by security forces. The incidents of enforced disappearances were condemned by both domestic and international human rights organizations. Despite

7387-504: Was declared incompetent by ratione temporis to deal with the majority of the 20,000 cases reported, it issued a number of sentences against the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which compensated several families of disappeared persons. In parallel with the resolutions of the international organizations, several non-governmental organizations drafted projects for an international convention. In 1981,

7476-550: Was elected in 1932, he later on called a constituent assembly that allowed him to be reelected, and his rule became more authoritarian until an election in 1948. During the following decades , the military of Honduras carried out several coups d'état, starting in October 1955. General Oswaldo López Arellano carried out the next coup in October 1963 and a second in December 1972, followed by coups in 1975 by Juan Alberto Melgar Castro and in 1978 by Policarpo Paz García . Events during

7565-550: Was first recognized as a human rights issue in the 1970s as a result of its use by military dictatorships in Latin America during the dirty wars. However, it has occurred all over the world. According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court , which came into force on July 1, 2002, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed at any civilian population, enforced disappearance qualifies as

7654-540: Was flintlock and gunpowder, the product of mixing sulfur, saltpeter, and coal in relative quantities: the Remington single-load rifle was one of the first bullet rifles that were introduced into the country during the government of General José María Medina. . The second stage of the Armed Forces is between the years 1842 and 1876 when the collective uniform emerged in the mid-1840s when the troops of General José Santos Guardiola faced those of General Nicolás Ángulo, in 1845 in

7743-402: Was given as per point III of the decree: III. …In case German or foreign authorities inquire about such prisoners, they are to be told that they were arrested, but that the proceedings do not allow any further information. German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel was condemned in connection with his role in the application of the "NN decree" by Adolf Hitler, although, as it had not been accepted at

7832-416: Was sent as a prisoner to Guatemala, where he remained until 1829. Thereafter he was elected head of state of Nicaragua, taking office on 12 May 1830. He exercised this office until November 1833, relying on the support of General Morazán. He tried to implement various Liberal reforms, but unsuccessfully, due to the opposition of the clergy. In 1835 he was elected head of state of El Salvador , but he declined

7921-466: Was used as a detention center by the DINA , the secret police. Furthermore, many other important officials of Allende's government were tracked down by the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) during Operation Condor . Thus, General Carlos Prats , Pinochet's predecessor and army commander under Allende, who had resigned rather than support the moves against Allende's government, was assassinated by

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