Tag: enforced disappearance

Where are they? Carmen María Sáenz Martínez and Lesbia del Socorro Gutiérrez Poveda are prisoners of a regime solely interested in its own survival

Posted on by cswpress in Latin America, Nicaragua

At 6am on 10 August 2024, fifteen police officers wearing ski masks and carrying AK-47s arrested 49-year-old Carmen María Sáenz Martínez at her home in Lomas de Santo Tomas in Matagalpa City, Nicaragua.

Two hours later police in two patrol cars detained Carmen’s colleague Lesbia del Socorro Gutiérrez Poveda, age 58, at the Guadalupana Farm in Samulali in the San Ramón Municipality.

Both women worked with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Matagalpa, formerly led by the now exiled Bishop Rolando José Álvarez Lagos, who spent nearly a year and a half in prison before he was expelled to the Vatican in January 2024. Lesbia had worked with the diocese’s rural and urban credit project since 2006, and Carmen as a justice promoter in marriage annulment cases since 2018.

Their families have not heard from them since.

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UN International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances: Honouring Eritrea’s Missing Voices

Posted on by cswpress in Eritrea, Sub-Saharan Africa

On the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, CSW shares a guest blog post from our friends and partners at Human Rights Concern-Eritrea (HRC-E).

As the world marks the UN International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, we stand in solidarity with the countless Eritrean families who have endured decades of pain, uncertainty, and fear. This day is a poignant reminder of the grave human rights violations committed by the Eritrean government, which continues to use enforced disappearance as a means to silence dissent and control its population.

Eritrea is one of the most repressive states in the world, where enforced disappearances are not isolated incidents, but part of a systematic campaign to quash opposition. Thousands of Eritreans, including political dissidents, journalists, religious figures, and ordinary citizens, have been forcibly disappeared—detained without trial, often in secret prisons, leaving their families in the dark about their fate or whereabouts.

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强迫失踪受害者国际日：来自中国的故事

Posted on by cswpress in Asia CN, China CN, chinese

自2006年以来，高智晟律师多次遭中共政权绑架、酷刑和拘留。2019年，他的妻子耿和女士告诉国际人权服务社，被强迫失踪“已成为他的生活常态”。

在这次采访中，她还说：“十几年来，我跟孩子从没有享受过普通人家团圆的欢乐……我们只有一个愿望：高智晟活着，活着回家。”

2009年，耿女士被迫带孩子们流亡海外。不久前，她刚刚纪念了又一个悲伤的周年纪念日：她的丈夫最近一次被失踪已满五年。

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International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances – Stories from China

Posted on by cswpress in Asia, China

Gao Zhisheng has been kidnapped, tortured and detained on and off by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime since 2006. In 2019, his wife Geng He told the International Service for Human Rights that being disappeared has become “the norm in his life”.

In that same interview, she added, “My children and I have never experienced the common happiness of united families… We only have one wish, which is that Gao Zhisheng is alive and that he can come back home alive.”

Ms Geng, who has been in exile along with her and Gao’s children since 2009, has just marked another sad anniversary: the fifth anniversary of her husband’s most recent disappearance.

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Four years, no answers: The disappearance of Pastor Raymond Koh

Posted on by cswpress in Asia, Malaysia

On 13 February 2017 Pastor Raymond Koh was abducted in broad daylight. He was on his way to see a friend when he was kidnapped from his car by 15 men in three black SUVs and four other vehicles in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.  Video footage of the incident, as well as eyewitness reports, appears to indicate that the men were professionally trained.

The abduction incident is infamously known as ‘7-15-40’; seven vehicles, 15 professional men and the whole process took just 40 seconds.

In 2018, I met his wife and son in Kuala Lumpur. The two of them have consistently called for answers regarding the pastor’s whereabouts, but today, over four years since his abduction, these answers remain elusive.

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