“People are born, they live and they die. They don’t disappear,” she said. But it happens. In the Philippines the practice is more known as “salvaging” a cruel play on the word that means “saving”.
Citroni, a professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca, has been active in the United Nations effort to ratify and eventually implement the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances.
Sen. Miriam Santiago files a bill making enforced disappearances a crime.
Citroni said Enforced Disappearances start with deprivation of liberty, followed by concealment or denial of the victim.
In searching for the disappeared kin, relatives often are met with questions by law enforcement authorities, “Who is he? Is there such a person?”
“Can you think of a much worse human brutality than someone telling you that your loved one never existed”, she asked.