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85-553: The State Research Bureau may refer to: State Research Bureau (organisation) , the Ugandan secret police under Idi Amin State Research Bureau (film) , a 2011 Ugandan action film Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title State Research Bureau . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change

170-628: 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 ,

255-484: 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

340-569: A bank in Kampala. The SRB also became less successful in eliminating suspected anti-Amin figures: Following the purge of Mustafa Adrisi in April 1978, SRB agents and Ugandan marines tried to massacre members of the Chui Battalion due to their suspected support for a pro-Adrisi coup, only to be gunned down by the soldiers. An attempt to arrest former minister Moses Ali around October of that year ended in

425-560: A commission of inquiry to investigate abuses of state authority. The commission concluded that the SRB and another state security agency, the Public Safety Unit, were responsible for most of the disappearances. The abuses committed by the SRB was known among personnel of various international embassies in Kampala , though they generally did not publicly criticise it. Despite its poor reputation,

510-531: 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,

595-724: 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

680-517: A stretch" before being executed; Venter referenced one prisoner who had "his eyes gouged out with a screwdriver and his genitals removed with a pair of garden shears." Dead prisoners were mostly dumped in a forest near Kampala. As a large amount of marijuana was found in the headquarters after Amin's fall, Western journalists assumed that SRB agents had taken drugs to be mentally "fortified" during torture sessions. Forced disappearance An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance )

765-484: A substantial number of Rwandan immigrants, and attractive Rwandan Tutsi women were used as undercover operatives as well as stationed at airports, banks, hotels, restaurants, government offices, hospitals, and locations near Uganda's borders. Empowered by a sweeping February 1971 decree which gave state agents wide latitude to act, the SRB tortured and executed many suspected dissidents, provoking international outrage. Agents frequently abducted people by forcing them into

850-577: A widespread network of spies and informants, collecting not just information on political opposition but also economic crimes. SRB agents closely watched all known foreigners in Uganda, and were responsible for the abduction and murder of many of them due to suspected dissident activities. When reading documents of the SRB after the Uganda–Tanzania War, Venter stated that the agency's approach to paperwork had an "unmistakable British colonial imprint" and

935-622: A widespread or systematic attack directed at any civilian population, enforced disappearance qualifies as 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

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1020-573: 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

1105-415: 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 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

1190-522: 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

1275-587: 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

1360-567: 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

1445-869: 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

1530-683: 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

1615-669: 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,

1700-726: 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

1785-588: 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

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1870-709: 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 ,

1955-730: The Uganda Army , took power in Uganda following a coup which overthrew the government of President Milton Obote . His advisers suggested that he try to differentiate himself from Obote by disbanding the General Service Unit (GSU), Obote's intelligence agency, which was highly unpopular within the general populace. In February 1971 Amin dissolved the GSU and through a decree established the State Research Centre. Major Amin Ibrahim Onzi

2040-581: 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

2125-632: 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

2210-574: 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

2295-531: 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

2380-705: 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

2465-512: 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

2550-511: 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

2635-547: 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

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2720-467: The SRB before being reassigned to other government positions. Agents drove late model vehicles with special tags. The SRB headquarters was located in a building on Nakasero hill in Kampala, next to the State Lodge Annex. Its main building was painted in bright pink, and had three stories as well as a "huge subterranean chamber" where maximum security cells were located. The agency maintained

2805-562: The SRB occasionally succeeded in uncovering plots aimed at deposing Amin. In 1977, it discovered that Ugandan exiles in Kenya were planning to invade Uganda . The SRB consequently forewarned the President, and the Uganda Army successfully repelled the invasion. Over time, the SRB further devolved; by late 1978, agents had formed criminal gangs which fought each other, and in one case SRB members robbed

2890-712: 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

2975-685: 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

3060-474: The United Nations established 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

3145-620: 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

3230-515: 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

3315-523: 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

3400-496: 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 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

3485-414: 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

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3570-453: The city fell to Tanzanian and Ugandan rebel forces in April 1979. Amid the confusion, several prisoners managed to escape from less secure cells in the SRB headquarters. Shortly before the last agents left, they tossed grenades into the holding cells of the SRB headquarters, killing about 100 detainees. The Tanzanians freed 13 survivors. The new Ugandan government officially disbanded the SRB. A few journalists visited SRB headquarters after

3655-437: 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

3740-440: 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

3825-525: 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

3910-417: The death of 10 agents following a shootout with his personal guards. In the Uganda–Tanzania War , the SRB unsuccessfully attempted to stem the spread of civil unrest and guerrilla attacks against Amin's government. The agency also experienced more internal disputes, as members refused to join the fighting at the frontlines and were subsequently arrested by their colleagues. Most SRB agents fled Kampala when

3995-466: 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

4080-415: 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

4165-416: 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

4250-658: The downfall of Amin, with many being extrajudicially killed by civilian mobs. As a result of the Rwandan members of the SRB, Rwandans gained a reputation of being violent and ruthless in Uganda. After Amin's overthrow, this reputation was used to justify anti-Rwandan violence and suppression in the following years. By 1979 the bureau employed about 3,000 men and women as agents, many of them Nubians and Rwandan immigrants. Male SRB agents commonly wore dark sunglasses, Kaunda suits, floral-print shirts, and bell-bottoms . Researcher Andrew Rice described them as "flagrant and fairly incompetent". Most personnel served for one year with

4335-444: 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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4420-431: 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

4505-465: 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

4590-486: The fall of Amin's regime. They discovered that few documents had been destroyed, removed or secured at the site, with much lying scattered around. The documents also included extensive evidence of torture and murder committed by SRB agents. War correspondent Al J Venter stated that he was horrified by what he saw in the headquarters, writing "In 20 years of covering the African military beat, I have seen nothing like it. Not even in Biafra ". SRB agents were hunted after

4675-521: 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

4760-430: 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

4845-415: 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

4930-459: The hands of the state has been labelled as "enforced" or "forced disappearances" since 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,

5015-435: 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,

5100-565: 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 ,

5185-442: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=State_Research_Bureau&oldid=834369490 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages State Research Bureau (organisation) On 25 January 1971 Idi Amin , Commander of

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5270-524: The methods of the KGB . Many were sent to the Soviet Union for specialised training. Others undertook military and police training in the United States and United Kingdom. ...the headquarters of the State Research Bureau—like most of the things in Amin's Uganda, the name was a gross abuse of reality. There was neither research, nor were state matters dealt with, nor was it an office...thousands of Ugandans met their tortuous end in its subterranean cells. —Journalist Godwin Matatu, 1979 The SRB recruited

5355-455: 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

5440-415: 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

5525-408: 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

5610-440: 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

5695-721: 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

5780-479: 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

5865-441: 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

5950-412: 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

6035-469: 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

6120-414: 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

6205-412: 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

6290-486: 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

6375-551: 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

6460-617: 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,

6545-516: 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

6630-668: 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

6715-514: The trunk of a car and driving off. For its role in state repression and killings, the SRB came to be derisively known among the Ugandan population as the "State Research Butchery". One contemporary account argued that the SRB rarely collected actual intelligence, and its members instead used their powers to incriminate people whom they had grudges against. In June 1974, in response to criticism of his regime and specifically accusations of numerous " disappearances " of persons in Uganda, Amin established

6800-605: Was appointed director, and technical assistance was sought from Israel in its formation. Its responsibilities were to gather military intelligence and conduct counterintelligence . The organisation was directly responsible to Amin. In early 1972 Amin ejected Israeli technicians from Uganda and changed the name of the organisation to the State Research Bureau (SRB). Agents from the Soviet Union were brought in to replace them, and they subsequently instructed SRB personnel in

6885-575: 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

6970-504: 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,

7055-402: 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

7140-486: Was rather well organized. In its later years, the SRB also made use of at least one computer . SRB agents frequently abducted people by forcing them into the trunk of a car and driving off. The SRB headquarters became notorious for the human rights abuses committed within its walls; Venter described it as "one-way trip to hell" and ex-rebel Paul Oryema Opobo called it a "place of no return". Prisoners were "flayed, beaten, suffocated, tortured or electrocuted for hours at

7225-466: 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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