BEIRUT: Saint Joseph University has convened the first university dialogue about enforced disappearance and national reconciliation in Lebanon. Monday’s conference, entitled “Shedding Light on Enforced Disappearance in Cyprus: A Roadmap for Lebanon?” and organized by the Lebanese Center for Human Rights, took the example of Cyprus as a point of comparison for Lebanon.
Christophe Girod, the United Nations Representative of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, spoke with a panel of local experts including the rapporteur of the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee, Ghassan Moukheiber, civil society officials and families of the disappeared.
Doha Chams of the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar moderated the conference, during which a number of people expressed their frustration at the slow pace of the Lebanese authorities in resolving the issue of the disappeared.
Jeremy Sarkin, chairman-rapporteur of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances of the United Nations, sent a personal message of greeting to the organizers and speakers of the conference and stressed that resolving the question of enforced disappearance constituted “an important step toward achieving national reconciliation,” but that “processes of truth and justice must also occur.” He said he hoped the debate could spark “momentum for resolving this question in the near future.”
More than 17,400 individuals “disappeared” during the Lebanon’s 1975-90 Civil War, and while most are presumed dead, a number are thought to still be languishing in Syrian prisons. An amnesty law for all crimes perpetrated before March 1991 gave protection to those responsible for the disappearances, however, and the government has since stalled on the issue. – The Daily Star
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