Mothers and wives of the disappeared peacefully protesting in front of the presidential palace. Alkarama. All rights reserved.The use of enforced disappearance as a tool of repression is not insignificant. Far worse than arbitrary detention, torture or summary execution, it creates a sense of insecurity and profound terror not only among the families of victims, but also among their relatives and neighbours and by extension the whole society.
This technique which was developed by the German Gestapo during the Second World War, used by the French army during the Algerian Independence War and later by south American dictatorships, aims at controlling a society by instilling in each and every member of society confusion and the fear of becoming the next victim if he or she persists in “supporting the enemy”.
It is a “perfect crime” that leaves no trace: neither the arrest nor the detention are acknowledged, there are no legal proceedings, the victim never existed, s/he becomes “dust”. N’ghabrouk (“we will turn you into dust”) was the common term used by torturers in Algeria in the 1990s. It is almost impossible to know who detained the victim and what happened to him or her.
