28/05/2026
“Memory is our strength, and justice remains our demand.” 🕯️
This International Week of the Disappeared 2026, DKA's partner organization the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) and its member organizations stand united under the banner: “Memory is Resistance: Carrying Hope, Demanding Truth.”
Enforced disappearance is designed to impose forgetting and silence. But across Asia, institutional amnesia is being met with fierce, unyielding resistance. Every photograph held aloft at a vigil, every name read into a UN submission, and every anniversary publicly observed is a refusal to let the state erase those who were stolen.
From the families in Sri Lanka and Pakistan demanding answers despite systemic silence and legal crackdowns, to the tireless searches for the "stolen children" (labarik lakon) in Timor-Leste, the fight for truth persists. Despite escalating state repression—including the horrific acid attack on Indonesian human rights defender Andrie Yunus and the unjust 17-year sentences handed to Pakistani lawyers Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir and Hadi Ali Chattha—the families and advocates of the disappeared refuse to relent.
AFAD is calling on regional governments for immediate action:
1️⃣ Ratify and implement the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED).
2️⃣ Independent investigations, free from state interference, to prosecute perpetrators in civilian courts.
3️⃣ Truth, full disclosure, and meaningful reparations for survivors and families.
4️⃣ Guarantee the safety of human rights defenders and end state-sponsored reprisals.
We stand in unwavering solidarity with every family waiting for answers, closure, and justice. The state cannot silence the truth by imprisoning or intimidating its advocates.
✊ Read and download the full, detailed regional briefing statement here: https://disappeared-asia.org/whats-happening/10-statements/657-afad-statement-on-international-week-of-the-disappeared-2026-memory-is-resistance-carrying-hope-demanding-truth
