Disappearances: Rights activists demand independent probe body

Rights organisation Mother’s Call today held a discussion on the occasion of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances at the National Press Club in Dhaka.

Apart from the family members of those disappeared, eminent citizens and rights activists, including Mahmudur Rahman Manna, Dr Zafrullah Chowdhury, Zonayed Saki, and Asif Nazrul, among others, were present at the programme.

“Every year we come to this meeting and see the same dejected faces. But our calls for justice do not reach the people in power,” said Mahmudur Rahman Manna.

“We demand forming of an independent commission to investigate the incidents of disappearances and bring back the victims,” Manna, also the convener of Nagorik Oikya, added.    

“The next year is the birth centenary of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The best gift on such occasion to these families would be bringing their loved ones back to them,” Zafrullah said, urging the prime minister to take actions in this regard.

The organiser of Mother's Call, mother of Sajedul Islam Suman, a BNP man who was picked up in 2013, is now bed-ridden due to old age complications, Suman’s sister Marufa Islam Ferdausi said.  

All these years, she has been waiting and fighting to bring her son back, but it is now uncertain whether she will ever get to see her son again, Marufa said.

She called upon the authorities concerned to bring her brother back so that her mother can see him one more time.

Mother of Mozammel Hosen Topu, a BCL activist who has been missing for more than three years, said that many mothers in the country are passing unbearable days.

Such a situation cannot go on in an independent country, she added.