Title	Algeria: "Disappearances": the wall of silence begins to crumble
Publisher	Amnesty International
Publication Date	1 March 1999
Country	Algeria
Topics	Arbitrary arrest and detention | Armed groups / Militias / Paramilitary forces / Resistance movements | Disappeared persons | Persecution based on political opinion | Persecution of family members
Citation / Document Symbol	MDE 28/001/1999
Cite as	Amnesty International, Algeria: "Disappearances": the wall of silence begins to crumble, 1 March 1999, MDE 28/001/1999, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6a9ccc.html [accessed 7 June 2023]
Comments	In the past six years, some 3,000 Algerian men and women have 'disappeared' after being taken away by the security forces. The victims are a widely varied group of people. They come from all social, economic and political backgrounds and from most areas of the country. People of all ages have been affected. The victims 'disappeared' after being taken away from their home, their workplace or elsewhere, often in front of relatives, neighbours or colleagues, by members of the police, gendarmerie and military security units, as well as by state-armed militias. Some of the 'disappeared' are thought to have been arrested because they were suspected of being involved in some way with an armed group. Others were merely denounced as such. For others still, there is no discernible reason for the 'disappearance'. Arrest procedures and the routine practice of secret detention have contributed to the spread of the phenomenon of 'disappearances'. Security forces often show no identification or warrant when making arrests. They may wear uniform and drive security force vehicles, but equally may arrive in ordinary cars wearing balaclavas and plain clothes. In flagrant violation of Algerian law and international human rights standards, those arrested are routinely held in secret detention for days, weeks or months, before being released without charge, transferred to a recognized prison, or simply 'disappearing'. For years the Algerian government has been flouting its international obligations to prevent the arbitrary arrest, secret detention and 'disappearance' of its citizens. Relatives, especially mothers and wives, of the 'disappeared' have been bearing the brunt of the tragedy, facing bureaucratic complications in addition to anguish, despair and economic hardship. Families have spared no efforts to try to obtain the smallest scrap of news concerning the whereabouts of their missing relatives. Their inquiries with the authorities have in most cases borne no fruit, and in the few cases when a reply has been forthcoming, families are usually told that the 'disappeared' is either not known to the authorities, has run off to join an armed group or has been abducted and perhaps killed by an armed group. However, such explanations often contradict eye-witness accounts of the arrest of a 'disappeared' person and subsequent reports received from people who had encountered them in secret detention and were later released. Until last year, the issue of 'disappearances' was a taboo subject in Algeria and received little attention in the international arena. For years families of the 'disappeared' refrained from protesting publicly out of fear for the safety of their detained relatives and themselves. However, during the course of 1998 more and more families of 'disappeared' overcame their fear and their increasingly persistent protests and lobbying forced the issue to be debated in parliament, on the streets and on the front pages of the national press. The wall of silence around the issue of 'disappearance' has begun to crumble but much remains to be done to find the 'disappeared'. Amnesty International seeks to contribute to the mounting pressure for action to be taken to save the many 'disappeared' who are believed to be still alive in secret detention and calls for a full, impartial and independent investigation to be launched into all cases of 'disappearance'. This report deals only with the issue of 'disappearances' in Algeria, but Amnesty International continues to monitor, campaign against and condemn, repeatedly and unreservedly, all other forms of human rights abuses in the country which fall within its mandate, including killings, torture and other abuses, which are committed in Algeria by security forces, by militias armed by the state and by armed groups which define themselves as 'Islamic groups'. These are documented extensively in previous reports published by the organization in recent years.
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