Call for returning enforced disappearance victims before Eid

Rights activists on Saturday criticised the government for continued rights abuse and said evidences were being collected over the reported cases of enforced disappearance for future trial of the people behind the crime against humanity.
The rights campaigners said more than 500 people became the victims of enforced disappearance since Awami League government assumed in power in 2009. 
They made the demands at a human chain organised by Mayer Daak, a platform of the families of victims of enforced disappearance, 10 days before the Eid-ul-Fitr.
The families called on the authorities to find out their relatives so that they could celebrate the Eid with their respective families. 
Families of victims of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and custodial torture, and academics, among others, joined the human chain in front of the National Press Club and asked the government to bring back the victims of enforced disappearance.
Rights activist Nur Khan Liton said none would be speared for the cases of enforce disappearance as evidences were being collected for future prosecution. 
He also called for setting up an independent and acceptable inquiry body to identify the perpetrators behind the enforced disappearance. 
Dhaka University law teacher Asif Nazrul said as long the enforced disappearance would continue, the protest against it would also continue. 
Odhikar director ASM Nasir Uddin Elan said if the government was not behind the enforced disappearance then it was the government’s duty to find them out. 
A report of Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights, also known as FIDH, said on April 18 that enforced disappearance in Bangladesh constituted crimes against humanity.
International and local rights organisations have documented more than 500 cases of enforced disappearances in Bangladesh in the past decade.
Pointing to prime minister Sheikh Hasina, Gonosastha Kendra founder Zafarullah Chowdhury said the people behind the enforced disappearances were around her and urged her to return the victims.
BNP leader Sajedul Islam Sumon’s sister Afroza Islam Akhi said that the government was not responding to the calls made by the victims’ families although witnesses saw Rapid Action Battalion 1 members picking up her brother and cousins week before the January 5, 2014 national elections, boycotted by all opposition parties. 
Subhadra Chakma, sister of missing United Peoples Democratic Front leader Michael Chakma, said her brother remained missing since on April 9 when he left a house at Narayanganj for Dhaka.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net