Forced disappearance is a nightmare in Arab countries

On August 30, every year, the world recalls people forcibly disappeared at an international event called "International Day of Forced Disappearance", but in Arab countries it recalls every day the missing persons in prisons from their country.

On this day, humanitarian and international organizations reiterated the need to find missing persons in order to end the suffering of their families living in the hope of returning.

Arab countries have a large share of the missing and forcibly disappeared, due to the political and security upheavals that the region has been experiencing since the wars and political changes.

Hidden in Saudi Arabia

With the disappearance of enforced disappearances of citizens in several countries of the world, arrests and disappearances of activists, scientists and writers have recently intensified in several Arab countries, especially in Saudi Arabia.

Hundreds of prisoners of conscience are still missing and their fate is unknown. Some of them "may have been tortured or even physically liquidated," said the Twitter account.

He called on the Saudi authorities to immediately reveal the plight of 16 writers and activists (including two women), arrested as part of a mass arrests campaign in April.

On August 30, human rights activists staged a protest in front of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in London to demand the release of the detainees.

Participants waved banners carrying photos of a number of detainees in Saudi Arabia and chanted slogans condemning the new era of the Kingdom, during which several activists, human rights defenders and preachers were arrested in the background. opinion and situation.

Jamal Khashoggi .. Hide and murder

The name of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was the most important of last year. He began with his enforced disappearance at his country's consulate last October until his Saudi liquidation was disclosed by the Saudi authorities.

The assassination of Khashoggi shed light on the Kingdom's internal situation, particularly the issue of human rights and enforced disappearance of dissidents.

The assassination of Khashoggi, perpetrated by a security team working for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, warned of restrictions on freedoms within the kingdom and the confiscation of funds from traders and businessmen.

Since bin Salman came to power on June 21, 2017, international reports have reported that the country has seen an upsurge in arrests and repression, even from the ruling family, to whom the state has granted immunity since its foundation.

The repression, oppression and detention have prompted broad strata of Saudis to seek ways to flee the kingdom and seek asylum in European and American countries.

Hide Qatari nationals

Qataris have also been spared the abuses in Saudi Arabia, where a number of them have been arrested and forcibly disappeared since the Doha blockade in June 2017.

In May 2018, Saudi Arabia arrested Nawaf Talal al-Rasheed, a Qatari national, without charge, and was among the enforced disappearances until his release in April of this year.

Last November, the international human rights organization Efdi revealed the arrest of the Saudi student Abdul Aziz Saeed Abdullah on July 6, 2018. His family contacted him. The organization told him that Saudi security had arrested his son. He does not know where he is being held.

The kingdom also hid another Qatari national, Mohsen Saleh Saadoun al-Karbi, who had been arrested by Saudi and Emirati coalition forces in April 2018 on the border between Yemen and Oman, while he was returning from visiting parents, before being released last June.

On 21 August, Qatar accused Saudi Arabia of hiding Ali Nasser Ali Jarallah, a 70-year-old Qatari citizen, and his 17-year-old son Abdul Hadi in Saudi Arabia.

Hidden in the United Arab Emirates

In April, Emarat Lakes highlighted part of the repressive policy of the UAE regime, which hides dozens of detainees without any information about them.

The site said that dozens of detainees did not know where their families were or what charges they were carrying, pointing out that they felt threatened.

He explained that this comes at a time when the UAE authorities continue to promote the image of "tolerance", far from the dark reality of human rights in the country.

UAE hands have spread to Yemen, where human rights organizations have accused UAE forces of detaining hundreds of Yemenis in secret jails and using various forms of torture against them.

With the coup d'etat perpetrated by the UAE forces through the transitional militia in southern Yemen, they carried out large-scale arrests of opponents and supporters of the Yemeni government.

The violations of the United Arab Emirates have resulted in a decline in the index of freedoms, despite official efforts to promote a perfect picture of the reality of freedoms in general and political freedoms in particular.

Egypt .. increasing numbers

Egypt is one of the most prominent Arab countries in terms of human rights violations, according to the Shehab Center for Human Rights, which was killed by the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior. In two years, 56 citizens have disappeared by force.

The Center also explained in a previous statement that the number of enforced disappearances only, from 2013 to 2018, had reached over 6421 cases, including all age groups of Egyptian society.

He pointed out that the youth category was predominant in these statistics, as were all occupations, political and non-political trends.

Dozens of complaints are being received daily by human rights organizations interested in the Egyptian human rights case, claiming that Egyptian citizens have been victims of enforced disappearance by police officers. security. Their families confirmed that they did not reach their place of detention.

Syria .. terrifying figures

Eight years after the beginning of the Syrian crisis, the Syrian government, the armed opposition groups and the states that have the greatest influence over them have failed among the relatives of the missing and the missing who have been struggling for years to know if their loved ones are alive or dead.

According to the UN, 100,000 people have been arrested, abducted or disappeared in Syria since 2011.

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, at least 90,000 of them would have been arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared by regime forces.

"Family members of missing persons in Syria have been left alone to search for loved ones, often at great personal risk," said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International's director of research for the Middle East.