Missing Persons Commission

The Missing Persons Commission is the joint body, set up in 2008 under the Bishkek ceasefire, that searches for people who disappeared in the Second Iradi Civil War. Its members come from the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ) and the Iradi Freedom Society (IAC), it is chaired by the United Nations Mission in Irad (UNMI), and experts of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) do its forensic work. It lists about 140 men missing from the sweeps of 2007 and about 30 from the Front's prison camps, and it has identified 52 of the missing since 2012.^[1]

The sweeps and the prison camps

From August to November 2007 the Gendarmerie and the State Defense Corps swept the villages of the Chu and the Kara-Buura on the city side of the new line for supporters of the Popular Front of Irad and hidden rifles. About 2,000 men passed through a filtration site in the Merke grain store, and about 60 died there or, in the official phrase, "while escaping". Front veterans and the Autonomous Tribal Regions say that "the sunglasses", contractors of Blackwater USA, rode with the sweeps; the ISEZ and the company deny it (see Blackwater in Irad).^[2]

The Front held about 400 DPI prisoners, among them police, soldiers and NurGaz guards, in camps in the Talas Alatau and the Chatkal. UNMI and the ICRC brokered exchanges at the Qara-Chik Border Checkpoint on 24 November 2007 and 15 March 2008.^[1]

Work

The commission found its first grave, of eleven men in a ravine above Merke, in 2012. The ICRC matches remains against DNA samples given by families on both sides of the line, and the commission meets at Kara-Oi.^[1] Every 12 September, the anniversary of the ceasefire, mothers of the missing, most of them from the Kara-Buura villages, stand at the Qara-Chik checkpoint with photographs of their sons.^[3]

References

1. ^ United Nations Mission in Irad (2023). Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in Irad. New York.
2. ^ Human Rights Watch (2008). "While Escaping": Detentions and Disappearances in the Chu and Kara-Buura Valleys, 2007. New York.
3. ^ Talas Herald (13 September 2022). 'Fifteen years on, the mothers come back to Qara-Chik.' Talas.