News-Info-Alerts

Re: Another Family, Another War

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: February 21, 2003

"Families of war "missing" make call for help
By Karen Iley

GENEVA, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Yvonne Visaka Dharmadasa keeps chocolates in the fridge in case her son, a second lieutenant in the Sri Lankan army who has been missing since rebels attacked his camp in 1998, walks through the door.

Munira Subasic says her life stopped when her husband, son and another 20 family members disappeared in the 1995 fall of Srebrenica; while Dancille Mukandoli is tormented every day, not knowing where the bodies are of her husband and four children who were massacred in Rwanda in 1994.

The women were taking part in a conference organised by the Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on helping the families of people missing without trace during armed conflicts and how to prevent such incidents occurring.

There are tens of thousands of such cases, according to the ICRC. More than 22,000 people are still unaccounted for in the former Yugoslavia, for example, while there are over 100,000 missing in Rwanda and more than 6,000 in Peru.

The three-day conference, attended by almost 400 experts in humanitarian issues from 90 countries, aims to raise awareness of the problem within the United Nations, governments and non-governmental organisations.

"Urgent and determined action needs to be taken to better assist those who have lost their loved ones," ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger told the opening session.


FAINT HOPE

Dharmadasa, president of the Sri Lankan Parents of Servicemen Missing in Action, still hopes for news of her son, Achintha, who went missing during an attack by rebel forces from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

"I cannot rest until I know what happened to him...I have a box of chocolates waiting in my refrigerator. Every time we get some special chocolates or sweets, I put his share aside for him," she told journalists.

The uncertainty is the hardest thing to deal with, said Habib Nassar, a lawyer for the Committee of Families of the Kidnapped and Disappeared in Lebanon, where 17,000 people disappeared in the 1975-1991 war.

"For the families, it is worse not knowing what has happened than knowing that their relatives are dead. They stop living. They just wait. It's like their loved ones are still alive but in an underground prison. It's an impossible mourning," he said.

Subasic is still bitter after losing most of her family when Bosnian Serbs overran the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, killing thousands of men in what is widely seen as Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.

But the discovery of the remains of three of her relatives gives her comfort. Now president of the Mothers of Srebrenica Movement, Subasic will bury her uncle in nearby Potocari on March 31.

Initiatives like the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), which helped find and identify the 582 Srebrenica bodies to be buried next month, helped ease the pain, she said.

"Thanks to the ICMP, they are not just body bags. They have names," she said. "I'm living for the day of the funeral when our dearest loved ones, who apparently had no right to live, can at least be buried with dignity," she said."