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InvitationCommemoration Event:Looking for the disappeared… |
The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR), Constitution Hill and the Khulumani Support Group invite you to join in a public event to commemorate the International Day of the Disappeared on August 30, 2006.
Hundreds of families around South Africa are still looking for answers and the whereabouts of loved ones who went missing during the country's apartheid era.
The plight of these families in their truth-finding quest is too often ignored by government and role-players while largely under-resourced work is carried out by families and civil-society organisations determined to not only conduct investigations into the cases of the disappeared and hopefully provide closure for those looking for answers, but to also highlight the impact of the dilemma and provide support for those who have loved ones missing.
The International Day of the Disappeared on August 30 aims to draw attention to the fate of individuals either imprisoned under secret or uncertain circumstances or killed in various forms of political and social violence.
Imprisonment under secret or uncertain circumstances is a grave violation of human rights as well as, in the case of an armed conflict, of International Humanitarian Law. The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance as resolution 47/133 on December 18, 1992. It is estimated that secret imprisonment is practiced in about 30 countries.
Families of the disappeared are living lives dominated by continual searching, searching that has gone on for some in South Africa for as long as 30 years, effecting them psychologically, socially and economically.
South Africa is acknowledging the International Day of the Disappeared day along with the rest of the world by uniting families, friends and civil society organisations at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg to remember and honour those who went missing during apartheid era violence and the disappeared from South Africa and around the world. The event will include a candle lighting ceremony attended by Justice Albie Sachs on the steps of the Constitutional Court, public testimony from family members and the launch of CSVR's Disappearance Memory Project.
The event will also include talks on the history of The Day of the Disappeared, a procession to the Constitutional court led by Reverend Gift Moerane (SACC) and a visit to the Mapping Memory exhibition (Churchill Madikida)
Commemoration Event:International Day of the Disappeared(30 August 2006)Date: 30 August 2006 Parking available on Kotze Street and the Old Fort Parade Ground |
For more information please contact:
CSVR: Yolelwa Mbanjwa (082 574 4291) or Polly Dewhirst (082 562 6555) at 011 403 5650 and pdewhirst@csvr.org.za
