Southeast Asia Rights Advocates Are Forcibly Disappeared; Impunity Makes Monitoring Difficult
This story and the lead image were produced and published by Asia Democracy Chronicles.
The pickup truck had suddenly appeared and overtook the tricycle Emman and a fellow environmental activist were on. The truck then blocked the tricycle’s path and forced it to a screeching stop. Before Emman and his companion could react, several armed men had dragged them off their ride and shoved them into the pickup.
That was more than a year ago. But Emman remains so traumatized that he has relocated from his home province of Pangasinan, in the Philippine north, to Metro Manila.
Rights groups and Emman himself believe the 2024 abduction can be traced to their activism on behalf of farmers and fisherfolk, the key victims of environmental injustices in Pangasinan. Emman no longer wants to recount what he went through in detention, but his experience echoes those of tens of thousands of others across the globe.
In Southeast Asia, the Philippines is considered the prime hot spot for enforced disappearances, with rights advocates, journalists, and lawyers among the usual abductees. But other countries in the region have also been having similar incidents, and observers and rights advocates alike say that these are on the increase. Emman can even count himself lucky that he was eventually freed.
Others who were forcibly disappeared months or even years ago have yet to resurface, such as human rights lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit in Thailand (disappeared March 2004) pastor Joshua Hilmy and his wife Ruth Sitepu in Malaysia (disappeared November 2016), and farmer and rights activist Xaysomphone Chilikham in Laos (disappeared February 2024).
Many have noted as well that enforced disappearance – the abduction and secret detention of individuals, often by state or state-affiliated actors, to silence them and instill fear in the community – has been part of transnational repression in Southeast Asia. This has been especially so among particular mainland states that seem unable or unwilling to protect rights advocates seeking refuge.
Just last December, a Cambodian court terminated a five-year probe on the disappearance of Thai political activist Wanchalearm Satsaksit, who was last seen being forced into a vehicle in central Phnom Penh in 2020.
Interestingly, Cambodia and Thailand are the only Southeast Asian countries so far that have ratified the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED).
At the time of his abduction, Wanchalearm was living in the Cambodian capital; he has not been heard from or seen since he disappeared and up until the recent court decision, Cambodian authorities had not presented any person of interest in the case.
Months earlier, at the 144th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva, Switzerland, the Vietnamese delegation was asked about the enforced disappearance of Chinese activist Dong Guangping, who was last seen being led away handcuffed and blindfolded by police in Hanoi in August 2022.
The delegation’s reply: “Up to date, we recognize no case of forced disappearance.”
Information blackout
In truth, statistics regarding such cases are hard to come by regionwide, as well as within each country. It well may be that the Philippines keeps emerging as having the most enforced disappearances in Southeast Asia largely because the media and civil society there are still able to monitor and record these cases.
Last August, during commemoration events marking the International Day of the Disappeared in the Philippines, rights advocates and relatives of local desaparecidos reeled off specific numbers for each administration since that of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. According to reports, 15 was the count for the disappeared during the first three years as president of the dictator’s son and namesake Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The younger Marcos took office in 2022.
In countries where media and civil society are less free or practically nonexistent, tracking the disappeared can be trickier. Vietnamese human rights defender Phạm Thị Thanh Nghiên, who is now living in the United States, cites as example the 2018 abduction, allegedly by plainclothes police officers, of eight members of the informal, secret organization Nhóm Hiến Pháp (The Constitution Group) ahead of their planned peaceful demonstration.
Nghiên says that no arrest warrant was issued; their families were not informed of their detention or their whereabouts. Two years later, the eight received varying jail sentences that came to 40 years altogether, on charges of disrupting public order.
No news was ever published or aired about their earlier abduction, Nghiên says. Or to be exact, no domestic news outlet dared to cover it.
Then again, Nghiên says that even when some reports do surface about such abductions, these are drowned out by state narratives describing the victims as criminals. In a chapter she wrote for a 2023 book on enforced disappearances, Angkhana Neelapaijit, wife of disappeared Thai lawyer Somchai, said that the day her husband was abducted was also the day they began to be called “the bandit lawyer’s family.”
Nghiên herself was a victim of a short-term enforced disappearance – much like what Emman experienced – along with her husband Huỳnh Anh Tú and several other activists in 2016, due, she says, to their participation in protests. While they were detained, no one outside, including their loved ones, had a clue where they were and what was happening to them.
Nghiên says that relatives of abductees, short-term or otherwise, suddenly find friends and colleagues shunning them out of fear. Not knowing whom to trust also becomes a huge problem for the families of the disappeared.
Nghiên adds that “the process of requesting various documents, or at the very least, obtaining information from the police to find out what charges” for which their loved ones were arrested are among the hardships experienced by the families as well.
Ng Shuimeng, wife of prominent Lao community leader Sombath Somphone, who has been missing since December 2012, says that even both direct and behind-the-scenes pressures from international diplomatic communities have failed to push the Lao government to be transparent about her husband’s case. She says of Lao authorities: “They have continued to say they do not know what happened to Sombath and they continue to deny that he was actually taken.”
A ‘lack of culprits’
Taking the matter to court can be difficult, too. In Myanmar, says a former judge from that country, “no one dares to get involved since lawyers are not permitted in these cases and because it was done under duress.”
“Since some laws in our nation are up to the discretion of the authorities,” the former judge says, “I think that if someone tries to get involved, they will be susceptible to legal punishment.”
In Thai lawyer Somchai’s case, there had been hopes that information about his fate would surface after the arrest of five police officers suspected of involvement in his abduction. But since there was no body, they were charged only with robbery and coercion.
Only one was convicted, but only of coercion, while the rest were acquitted of both charges. The lone conviction was later overturned. The Department of Special Investigation under the justice ministry closed the case in 2016, citing a “lack of culprits.”
“Thailand enacted the Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance Act in 2022, but there has still been no investigation,” Angkhana told ADC in an email response to queries. “The Committee responsible under the Act has not responded to the families’ calls for further investigation. For the families, they are still living with fear and trauma and no remedy from the government, especially the Committee on Enforced Disappearance of the Ministry of Justice.”
Known for his strong criticism of the Thai police and military for the alleged ill-treatment and discrimination against Muslims in southern Thailand, Somchai is believed to have been forcibly disappeared in retaliation for his active work to defend suspected insurgents in that part of his country. His wife Angkhana was working as a nurse when he was abducted, but turned into an activist after he was disappeared.
Somchai’s is the first and so far only case in Thailand brought to court by the family of a disappeared. But Angkhana and her four daughters were later barred from appearing as co-plaintiffs on the case because, the court said, there was no evidence that Somchai was unable to stand up for himself.
Seeking justice
Vũ Quốc Ngữ, executive director of overseas-based Defend the Defenders , which works to systematically document serious human rights violations in Vietnam, says that in cases of arbitrary detention or forcible disappearances, activists’ family and friends should contact human rights groups, foreign embassies and other local activists to raise awareness.
“The most important thing is that you have to be brave to seek justice for your loved one,” says Ngữ.
In the case of Emman, a wide range of media and civic groups, including international ones, as well as political allies and the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines, was key to his release. Emman has since sought to build his own resilience by expanding his personal networks.
“The prompt reporting of the incident by the local community organization helped ensure a timely response from human rights groups,” he says. “Continuing my work with environmental groups in Metro Manila has helped me regain my composure and overcome the fear from that traumatic experience.”
Lao activist Sombath’s wife meanwhile says that allying with other wives in the same boat across Asia has brought her tremendous comfort. She says that it is hard to seek support locally because perpetrators of enforced disappearances, at least in Laos, target individuals instead of arresting en masse, so the public finds it difficult to relate to these cases.
Thirteen years after Sombath’s abduction, Ng Shuimeng remains a Vientiane resident — and not about to give up hope just yet.
“I live in Laos because this has been my home for a long time,” she says. “My husband is a Laotian and so I don’t want to leave because I think it’s important for me to wait for him to come back safely.”
“I don’t see why I should leave,” she continues, “because the crime was committed against him and by leaving it’s like I would give up my struggle to find him.”
As for Angkhana and her children, they have also continued to seek the truth, refusing to accept money or favors in exchange for silence. In the 2023 book she contributed to, though, Angkhana said that a trusted official finally told her informally that Somchai had been brought out of Thailand and tortured until he died. While the unverified news was heartbreaking, Angkhana wrote, at least it finally released the family from the limbo of knowing virtually nothing.
“After the abduction incident, I still don’t feel very safe,” says Emman, who had been red-tagged before the incident and is using an alias for this story. “While I’m looking forward to returning to work in my province, that decision will depend on the security situation and, if necessary, the legal protections or remedies available.”
