Int’l Day for Enforced Disappearances: Victims’ families give up on the State 

When poet and playwright Arshad Mushtaq started reciting his new poem portraying the unending wait of a mother for her disappeared son, family members of victims of enforced disappearances in the audience broke into tears. Donning black cloaks and snow white headbands, scores of family members of victims of enforced disappearances from the Valley on Wednesday gathered at Srinagar’s Pratap Park and held a peaceful sit-in demonstration to mark the International Day of Enforced Disappearances.

Octogenarian Rahiti, who came all the way from a far-flung village of Chake-Kawosa in Budgam district with her seven-year-old granddaughter, recounted how her young son Mohammad Ramzan Sheikh vanished after Army picked him up in 2004 from his village.

“My son had nothing to do with militancy. On June 6, 2004, he was returning home from market and a few Army men toting assault rifles took him along with them. We haven’t heard from him since,” said Rahiti.

Sheikh , a carpet weaver by profession, was the sole bread-winner of his family. His father Abdul Rehman was bedridden for many years and died in 2006.

Following his arrest, Rahiti registered an FIR with a nearby police station and looked for him in all security camps to no avail.

“I searched for him everywhere but could not find him. I sought help from both police and civil administration, but they hardly did anything,” said Rahiti.

Khaziri, the mother of Mohmmad Hussain, who had disappeared in 2003 in Army custody, cried inconsolably while recounting her ordeal.

“I lost everything after my son was gone. We were leading a hand-to-mouth existence and he was our only hope. Ever since he disappeared, we are finding it really difficult to make ends meet.

Khaziri says that she doesn’t expect the state to deliver justice to the family.

The tale of Hafeeza, who has been leading the life of a half-widow for the last 25 years, is along similar lines after her husband went missing while on an interstate trip.

Hafeeza claims that her husband Ghulam Nabi, a shawl vendor, went missing during a business trip to Amritsar in 1992. She alleges that the police killed him but the body was never handed back to the family.

“A month later after he went missing in Amritsar, some local cops came to my house and showed me a photograph of a bullet-ridden body and said that he was my husband,” said Hafeeza

“When I asked them for the dead body, they said they could not return it as it had not been handed over to them by the police in Amritsar,” Hafeeza added.

Political analyst Shahnawaz Mantoo says the International Day for Enforced Disappearances signifies that responsibility lies with the global community to take concrete rehabilitative measures and at the same time pressure the concerned state governments to frame inclusive policies for rehabilitation of the families of victims.