VOICES OF THE DISAPPEARED

By all accounts Voices Of The Disappeared will be a spectacular show, combining music and poetry, with dramatic re-enactments by the Galway-based theatre troupe Macnas. According to Jim Loughran, Development Officer with Amnesty and organiser of the event, it will provide an imaginative look at the people behind the statistics and he hopes that it will show them as real people, with real hopes and dreams.”

The seven particular cases of disappearances that will be dramatised in the Gaiety on the night are intended to represent the countless others who remain unaccounted for. The show will look at the human dimension to the suffering and celebrate the ‘the lives behind the lies’.

Jimmy Murphy who wrote the award-winning Brothers of the Brush, has written the script and Macnas will be providing the visual drama throughout the evening. Various celebrities will be reading poetry and telling the stories of the disappeared as Macnas perform.

UNDERGROUND HELL

The actress Sinéad Cusack will recount the stories of Maria Rumalda Camet from Guatemala and Sara Cristina Chan Chan Medina from El Salvador: Early morning on 15 August 1989, the 23-year-old Maria is asleep. Suddenly men are shouting , the doors are kicked open and Maria is dragged from her distraught husband and crying children. She is never seen again. In Santa Ana, El Salvador the ten-year-old Sara Cristina witnesses the killing of her father, a prominent trade unionist. Ten years later on Saturday, 18 August 1989 at 6pm, Sara Cristina and a friend are detained by 6 uniformed members of the Salvadoran Air Force. Witnesses see them being interrogated with their hands up against the wall. They are taken away and never seen again. Wally Page will perform a song called ‘Sara Cristina’, specially written for the occasion.

Oscar winner Jeremy Irons will tell the stories of Jabbar Rashid Shifki and Rasul Sakar. Jabbar Rashid Shifki, a 15-year-old Kurdish child was arrested by the Iraqi army in 1983. He was never seen again. Rasul Sakar was arrested by Turkish police officers and militia guards on the night of 2 November 1992. Gunshots were heard two hours later. The next morning his body was found in an empty yard. He had been shot 15 times in the back.

The actor Donal Donnelly, who appeared as the chain-smoking corrupt Bishop in Godfather 3 and Freddie in John Huston’s The Dead will tell the story of Harijit Singh. The 22 year old was dragged from a bus by police in the Punjab on 29 April 1992. Two years on and his father is still campaigning for Harjit’s release.

Actor Mick Lally of Glenroe fame will talk about Marsinah a 25-year-old factory worker who was brutally tortured, raped and killed in Indonesia in early May 1993 because of her role as a labour activist.

The closing sequence of the night describes the Reappearance of the Bourequat Brothers in Morocco. The brothers disappeared after being arrested in Morocco in 1973. In December 1993 they were released from an underground hell called Tazmamert, in which they had spent ten and a half years in total darkness.

The Concert while portraying the immense human tragedy of “Disappearances” is also a celebration of the lives of these people and is intended as a tribute to their courage and the courage of their friends and families. It is a testimony to the triumph of the human spirit.

HAUNTING MELODIES

Throughout the night there will be performances by a variety of renowned performers. Eleanor McEvoy and Máire Ní Bhraonáin will be playing, as well as Charlie McGettigan and Paul Harrington, winners of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Another act that won huge acclaim at the Eurovision, performing Bill Whelan’s ‘Riverdance’, was Anúna. They will be bringing their haunting melodies to the Gaiety on the night. The Catalan singer Lluis Llach is flying in specially from Barcelona to take part in the concert for Amnesty. One of his most famous songs ‘L’Estaca’ was sung in the streets of Barcelona against the baton charge of Franco’s police, against Pinochet in Chile, and for Solidarity in Poland.

Voices Of The Disappeared will undoubtedly prove to be a night worth remembering. This exciting combination of music, poetry and performance will show the lives behind the lies and convey the suffering experienced by ordinary people and whole communities when governments use terror to achieve their goals.

Take a good look. Don’t ever say “I didn’t know it was happening.”

• Tickets are £25, £20, and £15 available from the Dublin Theatre Festival Office or the Gaiety Theatre Box Office.

RAGE THROUGH THE FAX MACHINE

Letter writing is one of the mainstays of Amnesty International’s many campaigns. According to Amnesty, an informed and angry public can pressurise officials to review their policies and to take steps to protect human rights.

In many countries publicity abroad has been followed by the granting of amnesties, open trials, improved prison conditions, the commutation of the death sentence and the investigation of “death squad” killings. A letter from a prisoner in Morocco shows the importance of a simple letter: “It was in the darkness of my humid cell that I received my first reassuring sign, a letter from Amnesty. It was a sign of hope.”

Amnesty also operates an Urgent Action Network. When it is feared that there is a serious and immediate threat to an individual’s well-being, Amnesty’s Urgent Action Network gets to work. On countless occasions this rapid response has saved lives.

It saved the life of Bruce Harris, Director of “Casa Alianza”, a refuge for street children in Guatemala, as well as some of his workers. Axel Mejia was talking with a group of street kids when he was picked up by the police. Bruce was concerned for his safety, since many other members of the team had received death threats and there had been attempts made on his own life. He was particularly concerned because the police authorities denied all knowledge of Axel’s disappearance.

He contacted Amnesty and an Urgent Action Appeal swung into action. Inside five hours letters and faxes swamped the office of the Chief of Police. Eight hours later Bruce received a phone call from the Chief of Police along the lines of “You and I had better talk”. Axel was subsequently released from the very same police station which had earlier denied all knowledge of his existence.

“If it weren’t for Amnesty International, I wouldn’t be alive,” said Bruce.

planned

strategy

Many people involved in an Urgent Action Appeal sent their messages by fax. Often a police station or a government building will receive so many faxes that their fax machines will be clogged up, processing nothing but messages from Amnesty members and thereby making any normal business virtually impossible. It works. Some Amnesty members are now sending their messages by E-mail. But taking advantage of modern technology by faxing messages does not negate the importance of the simple letter.

Many new members of Amnesty join the Freedom Writers Network for the first six months. They are sent sample letters which they can use as notes to write their own letters of appeal. One such sample letter is the one addressed to President Suharto of Indonesia. The letter is part of Amnesty’s campaign to bring an end to disappearances and political killings. It expresses deep concern about the killing of Domingos Segurado and at least two hundred people at the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, East Timor, on 12 November 1991 by members of the Indonesian armed forces and it urges the government to take steps to account for all those who were killed or “disappeared” during and after the Santa Cruz massacre.

Letters like this are important to keep up the international pressure on those governments that insist on “disappearing” people. According to Amnesty, disappearances are seldom the result of an individual police officer or militia person. Rather they are the result of a clear and long-planned strategy by military and government authorities to eliminate any opposition. If you want to know what you can do, you can start with a letter.

CATALAN SOUL

Holding raised cigarette lighters aloft at rock concerts has become a tired cliche. Jaded rock stars wearing their hearts on their Armani sleeves as they sing the blues. You know the story. But this tradition did not have such an ignoble birth.

In Spain, under Franco, the words of songs had to be submitted to the censor in advance, and in concerts the audiences would sing the censored words holding up matches and cigarette lighters. It was a defiant gesture against oppression. It was symbolism as powerful as the Black Panther salute at the Olympic games. It was dangerous.

Lluis LLach was one of those censored singers in Franco’s Spain. Unable to perform there publicly, he sang to great acclaim in France and Germany and only returned to Spain one month after the good Dictator’s demise.

His songs of national pride helped his native Catalonia survive the dark days of Franco. The songs, with strong links to the musical traditions of Latin America, are sung in Catalan and are a mixture of poetry and drama – living proof that the protest song ain’t dead and gone, Llach is more Gil Scott Heron than Joan Baez.

He will be performing as part of Amnesty’s Voices Of The Disappeared concert on 16 October. The Concert is being filmed by R.T.E. and the organisers are hoping that it will be shown on 10 December, Human Rights Day. Don’t miss it. In this case, the Revolution will be televised!

THE GRIM BUT AMAZING STORY OF THE

BOUREQUAT BROTHERS

The story of The Bourequat Brothers is truly amazing. It begins in Morocco in 1973. The three brothers Midhat, Bayazid and Ali were “disappeared”. They were not heard from until eighteen years later when, in December 1991, they were released.

They had been imprisoned in an underground hell called Tazmamert, somewhere in the remote Atlas mountains. For ten-and-a-half years of their imprisonment they had been held in total darkness. In the first few weeks of their release they were unable to walk. Midhat, the eldest, was fifty-nine when released. He had lost more than ten inches in height because of the effects of such inhumane imprisonment.

When released he shuffled about awkwardly, trying to learn again how to walk. The expression on his face was one of constant pain. Bayazid, the second brother, who was fifty-eight when released could only pull himself to his feet with his arms, such was the curvature of his spine after years of imprisonment. Of the three, only Ali, the youngest brother was able to stand upright when released but he, too, was frail and shrunken.

Theirs is a story of great human strength. Few could have survived their ordeal and it serves as an inspiration to the families of other victims of “disappearances”. Amnesty International saw it as a milestone for Morocco when more than four-hundred political prisoners were released after King Hassan II declared it was time to turn the page on “what are known as political prisoners”.

DISTANT VOICES, STILL ALIVE ?: THE DISAPPEARED

Jabbar Rashid Shifki was just 15 years old when he was arrested by the Iraqi army in 1983. Eleven years later his fate and whereabouts are still unknown. He was one of hundreds of Kurdish children who “disappeared” at the same time. The children were all members of the Barzini clan.

He is probably dead, dumped in an unmarked grave. We do not know. Around 8,000 males aged from eight to seventy were rounded up in raids which lasted for more than a week. They were forced into military vehicles and driven away. All have “disappeared”.

One month after their unacknowledged arrests, President Saddam Hussein said in a speech that “those people were severly punished and went to hell.”

Killings and “disappearances” on a massive scale practically dismembered the Salvadorian labour movement in the Eighties. In 1980, armed men burst into the home of the Chan Chan family as they slept and shot dead Jorge Eduardo Chan Chan Jimenez, a prominent trade unionist. The killers identified themselves as soldiers of the National Guard.

Following the death of her husband, Maria Juanna Antonia Medina moved with her children to the capital San Salvador, to start a new life. She could not return to her home in Santa Ana because repression was particularily fierce against trade unionists and others in that part of the country.

In 1988 her daughter Sara Christina, having witnessed brutal repression and seen her father gunned down before her, decided to witness and report on the plight of the trade union movement and became a photographer for the trade union federation, FENASTRAS. In 1989, not far from her home, she was interrogated by uniformed members of the Salvadorian Air Force, taken away and never seen again. Sara Cristina’s mother made every possible effort to find her daughter but following threats, detention, torture and attempted killing, she abandoned her painful search. Her pain was doubled when, despite the UN appointed Truth Commission concluding that Air Force personnel were in fact responsible for the “disappearances”, under the new ‘amnesty’ law in operation in Salvador, the guilty remain free.

police custody

In neighbouring Guatemala, the killing of trade unionists, socialists, students, street children and indigenous peoples is commonplace. One of those “disappeared” was twenty-three-year-old Maria Rumalda Camay. Early morning on the 15 August, she was dragged away from her bed. Her husband and two children never saw her again.

In 1992, on the 2 August, Resul Sakar was also dragged from his bed. He was ill and in bed when, shortly after midnight, a group of 20 to 30 officers and militia guards in plain clothes came to the door of his house in Cizre, southeast Turkey. He was dragged away for interrogation still wearing his pyjamas. The next day the quietly-spoken father of ten who didn’t believe in violence and always said the Turkish people and the Kurds should be “brothers” was found dead. His body was left in an empty yard.

Kashmir Singh still hopes to find his son Harjit. Harjit was dragged from a bus by police in Punjab on 29 April 1992. There was no warrant for the 22-year-old’s arrest and police denied that the incident ever took place. Despite having seen his son twice in police custody, Kashmir was given what they claimed were his son’s ashes.

They said that he had been detained for questioning but had been killed when Sikh militants attacked the police officers. Kashmir Singh has refused to believe that his son is dead and for more than two years has campaigned tirelessly for his son’s release. Kashmir Singh attests to the fact that disappearances are seldom the work of individuals but orchestrated government attempts to silence and terrorise a populace:

“I have discovered that what is happening to my family is not an isolated incident. I have seen with my own eyes, heard with my own ears the cries and screams of hundreds of young children, women and elderly people who have been tortured at the hands of the security forces. I have met with families who have the same story to tell”.

“Disappearances”: the same story is told the world over.

Her body was bloodied and covered in bruises and her neck bore the marks of strangulation. An autopsy revealed that she had been raped. Her attackers had also thrust a blunt instrument into her vagina causing severe bleeding.

Marsinah was found dead in a small shack at the edge of a field about 200 kilometres from her home in Porong, East Java, on 8 May 1993. She was 25 years old and a factory worker and was killed because of her role as a labour activist.

In the days before her death Marsinah had been actively involved in a strike at the watch factory where she worked. Military authorities, in particular the Captain later accused of involvement in Marsinah’s murder, had intervened directly in the dispute, and interrogated the workers about their role in the strike. On 5 May, 13 workers were summoned by the military and forced to resign or face charges for holding “illegal meetings” or “inciting” others to strike.

That evening Marsinah went to the local military headquarters to look for her colleagues. A few hours later an eye-witness saw her being forced into a white mini-van. She subsequently disappeared; her body was found three days later.

Marsinah’s story and the brutal nature of her death is not an uncommon one. Every year countless people are “disappeared” in different countries throughout the world. According to Amnesty International’s 1994 annual report, which covers the period from January to December 1993, almost 700 people disappeared or remained unaccounted for in 27 countries. A careless word, a fleeting thought or even a poem are enough to become one of the lost ones.

The expression itself – to become “disappeared” – has Orwellian connotations more horrific than other words used to describe the ending of another human being’s life. Cold-blooded murder, summary execution – these expressions fail to adequately convey the horror of being “disappeared”. It is more than simply killing someone. It is as if the authorities and the death squads want not only to kill but to obliterate all traces of the victim ever having been alive. To annihilate all evidence, to erase even from the collective memory the existence of a person.

Families and friends are left not knowing whether to pray or grieve. Thus “Disappearances” are meant to stifle opposition, a warning that this too might happen to you.

Painful Search

It was in Nazi Germany that people were first “disappeared” as part of a definite political strategy. The best and most effective way of silencing opposition was to eliminate a person without trace. It also had the affect of inspiring terror, thereby silencing further opposition. In Latin America the term “desparecidos” had to be coined to convey the horror of what was happening in places like Pinochet’s Chile.

These days in Latin America they have coined a new word. It is “desechable” and means disposables. It refers to street kids, drug addicts, and poor people. In Colombia, Guatemala and Brazil off-duty police officers “clean-up” the streets by killing these “disposable” people.

But the word “disappeared” is not confined to Latin America. It represents something which happens across the globe. In many countries, governments or their agents have simply decided to get away with murder. They have dispensed with all formalities concerning legal protection and inconvenient procedures. They simply identify those who threaten their power and they eradicate them.