Zimbabwe: exhumations and reburials of 1980s victims

Pindula Zimbabwe reports on the prospects for the exhumation and reburial of victims of the government’s 1980s “Gukurahuni” campaign against “dissidents” in Matebeleland. President Emmerson Mnangagwa is scheduled to meet with Matabeleland leaders and civil society groups, including the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission, to build consensus on steps forward.

Colombia: survivors speak up

Personnel from Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) have discovered human remains of 54 victims in the village of Dabeiba in the Northwest Colombia, according to Colombia Reports. The discovery comes in the context of a nationwide effort to enable survivors to speak up about forced disappearances and mass graves.

Kenya: unidentified bodies to be buried

Mpasho Kenya reports on the burial of 26 unidentified bodies in Kiambu County, near Nairobi, where mortuary capacity is limited. According to the law, hospitals may dispose of unclaimed human remains 21 days after…

Mass graves in Northeast Syria

The Hill reports on the urgent need to account for missing victims of Da’esh in Northeast Syria, where it says “post-ISIS recovery efforts are stalling” in an increasingly complex military and political situation. “Many of the kidnapped may have ended up in one of the over 20 mass graves uncovered so far in areas previously under ISIS control,” it says.

Rohingya refugees trafficked from Bangladesh

Anadolu reports that authorities in Bangladesh have started erecting barbed-wire fences around Rohingya refugee camps to rein in illegal trafficking of vulnerable refugees. “In recent months incidents of risky trafficking of Rohingya to Malaysia have significantly increased through the Bay of Bengal,’ the report says, adding that rights groups have characterized the fencing and other measures as violations of refugees’ rights.

Boat carrying 91 migrants missing in Mediterranean

A rubber dinghy carrying 91 migrants and refugees that set out from Libya has…

Lawyer recognized for documenting arbitrary arrest in Yemen

France 24 reports that Huda Al-Sarari, a lawyer who exposed a network of secret prisons in war-ravaged Yemen, where thousands of men and boys were arbitrarily held and tortured, has been named as the recipient of the prestigious human rights prize, the Martin Ennals Award.

Iraq: mass grave of Da’esh victims

Rudaw news agency reports on a sinkhole found in Nineveh in northern Iraq that is believed to contain almost 1,000 bodies. “The pit contains at least 1,000 bodies. They had even dumped victims into the mass grave while they were still alive,” a local official said.

Pattern of enforced disappearances in South Sudan

Human Rights Watch has called for the urgent reform of South Sudan’s National Security Service. It says the country’s Human Rights Commission and others have documented “a pattern of arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, and enforced disappearances”, by…

Nepal: Commission on Enforced Disappearance resumes work

The MyRepublica news portal from Nepal reports that the country’s Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) has resumed work, following a disruption caused by the retirement of previous commissioners in April 2019. A CIEDP spokesperson said the new Commissioners “will revisit files” that have already been prepared as well as initiating new investigations. He said an additional “DNA testing committee” has been formed.

Colombia: missing children

According to LAFM, Colombia’s Unit for the Search of Persons reported as Disappeared (UBPD) says it has received 163 requests to search for children and adolescents who were allegedly recruited into the internal armed conflict in different regions of the country (Original article in Spanish).

Colombia: human remains found

Elespectador reports on the discovery of unidentified human remains at a mass grave in Antioquia in northwestern Colombia, bringing the total number of victims found…

Enforced disappearances in the MENA region

Amnesty International’s latest report on human rights in the Middle East and North Africa has found, among other things, “widespread patterns of violations by security forces in the context of the criminal justice system, including torture and other ill-treatment and enforced disappearances, most notably in Egypt, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria.”

Syria: mass grave found east of Damascus

The Syrian government says a mass grave containing around 70 sets of human remains has been found in Duma, east of Damascus, in an area that was controlled by armed anti-regime groups until April 2018, ANSA Med reports. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the bodies found are those of civilians and government soldiers.

Malta: migrant rescue

The Times of Malta reports on operations by the Maltese navy in a situation characterized by large numbers of unseaworthy migrant vessels. Following the rescue of…