Day of the Disappeared: remembering victims of the Bosnian war – in pictures

Families are still searching for 12,000 missing relatives from the 1990s war in the western Balkans. Photographer Armin Smailovic followed one man, the only survivor of a 1992 massacre in which he lost his mother, brothers and sister. http://bit.ly/2vHCOLM

Spain: Archaeologists exhume civil war dead from mass graves

Spanish archaeologists have unearthed bodies from mass graves dating back to the 1936-1939 civil war. The bodies were exhumed from a local cemetery in Valladolid in central Spain where victim campaign volunteers aimed to bring closure for relatives still searching for family members. Four mass graves have been excavated at the site, and 228 bodies have been recovered there since April 2016. There are thought to be more than 2,000 mass burial sites across Spain dating back to the civil war. Historians estimate that 500,000 civilians were killed during…

Horror of disappeared women in Syrian prisons

On International Day of the Disappeared, campaigners are calling on the UN to focus on the plight of people detained by the Assad regime in Syria. “While we hear about the sieges, the civilians displaced by conflict and the refugees, people know very little about the hidden horrors those in detention are facing,” said Amnesty’s Syria campaigns manager, Kristyan Benedict. The majority of female prisoners are held in Adra prison in Damascus, according to Amnesty. In the early days of the uprising female detainees were mainly political activists or humanitarian workers. But as the crisis escalated it became more common for other women, often relatives of opposition fighters, to be arrested and used as bargaining chips, sometimes for prisoner swaps. http://bit.ly/2iIpRyX

Libyan coastguard rescues nearly 500 migrants and refugees off Tripoli

Libya’s coastguard rescued nearly 500 people on Tuesday at sea west of the…

Enforced disappearances in Bangladesh

The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) in Bangladesh has issued a report stating that at least 388 people have gone missing in Bangladesh since January 2009, with at least 60 disappearing in July 2017. More than 100 of the victims were members of the political opposition, and the ALRC maintains that law enforcement agencies, including the national police and the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) have been responsible for enforced disappearances. http://bit.ly/2wFgRkf

Yezidi women rescued from Islamic State in Tal Afar, Iraq

The Kurdistan Region Office on Yazidi abductees reports that a 40-year old Yezidi woman and two Yezidi girls aged 19 and 14 have been released from their Islamic State captors in Tal Afar, north-west Iraq. The Kurdistan Region Government’s Endowments and Religious Affairs Ministry stated in July that Islamic State massacres of the Yezidi have forced nearly 360,000 to flee their homes while 6,417…

“Mass killings, enforced disappearances” of Rohingya in Myanmar

The Asian Legal Resource Center (ALRC) and the ODHIKAR Coalition for Human Rights have called on the UN Human Rights Council to take note of the situation of the Rohingya community in Rakhine state in Myanmar. “The ALRC and Odhikar seek immediate, effective action from the international human rights community to protect the victims of Rohingya Muslim community from ethnic cleansing by the military and security forces of Myanmar,” the two groups said in a statement, adding that the Rohingya “are the victims of gross human rights violations, including mass killings, enforced disappearances, torture, rape and arson attacks”. http://bit.ly/2vBTinO

Anglicans pray for freedom of abducted activists in Malaysia

The Synod of the ​Anglican Diocese of West Malaysia on 25 August issued a statement expressing concern over the disappearance of Pastor Raymond Koh. Thursday will mark the 200th day since Koh’s disappeared, along with…

US can extradite Ex-El Salvador official for civil war massacre

JustSecurity.org reported 23 August that a US federal judge has ruled that Inocente Orlando Montano Morales (Montano) – who headed El Salvador’s National Police as Vice Minister for Public Security in the 1980s – can be extradited to Spain to stand trial for his role in the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter on the grounds of the University of Central America (UCA). Montano has filed a notice of appeal. Five of the priests were Spanish nationals. Although the Salvadoran government did open an investigation into the massacre and convict some of the suspects, the defendants were later released upon the passage of an amnesty law. http://bit.ly/2xguKm4

Turning point in Duterte’s war on drugs?

CNN reported on Thursday on the case of 17-year-old Kian Delos Santos, who was shot by plainclothes police officers last week in…

Mass grave found in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Balkan Insight reported on Wednesday that a new mass grave has been discovered in the locality of Koricanske Stijene in central Bosnia, which in 1992 was the site of a mass killing of around 200 Bosniak and Croat civilians. So far, 11 former policemen from the town of Prijedor have been sentenced for the murders at Koricanske Stijene. One of them was sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague, while the others were sentenced by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. http://bit.ly/2wA1av3

Extrajudicial executions in El Salvador

InSight Crime reported on Wednesday that a special forces unit in the El Salvador police committed at least three extrajudicial executions, sexually assaulted two teenagers and extorted money via Facebook, according to an investigation by the Salvadoran online magazine Factum. The article claims that the police are actively pursuing and extrajudicially…

Mafia-led militia may be stopping migrants from leaving Libya for Italy

The Independent reported on Tuesday that there has been a 50-percent drop in the number of migrants attempting the deadliest route to Europe from Libya since mid-July 2017. Reuters has been told that a ‘former mafia boss’ is leading a group of policemen, army officials and civilians in an effort to stop boats departing from Sabratha, an ancient city 45 miles west of Tripoli. The mafia groups are thought to be attempting to gain access to funds for migration control from the EU, or are trying to position themselves as “legitimate partners for future developments”. The central Mediterranean route is currently the deadliest, with 2,400 people drowning so far in 2017. Around 600,000 migrants have made the journey since 2014 and 12,000 have died along the way. A 2016 UN report has documented sexual abuse, beatings, forced labor…