Naharnet - Six Years On, No Solution for Missing Lebanese - April 12, 2011

A press conference was held on Monday at the Gibran Khalil Gibran garden near the U.N. house in Beirut to send a message to authorities that the suffering of the families of Lebanese missing in Syria has not dissipated six years after they erected a tent to make their voices heard. The event took place in the presence of the Committee of Parents of Lebanese Detainees in Syrian Prisons, the Committee of Parents of Kidnapped and Missing Persons in Lebanon, the Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE) and the Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH). On the 36th anniversary of the Lebanese civil war that erupted on April 13, 1975 parents carried the pictures of their children who either went missing or were still allegedly imprisoned in Syria. Parents urged the Lebanese politicians to form a national committee to follow up the issue, create a DNA database and ratify the U.N. Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance. The statement of the committees that was read during the press conference stressed some Lebanese politicians think that time would heal the wounds of the families but "haven't realized that the international community has developed legal mechanisms aimed at protecting all people from enforced disappearances." Parents accused the Lebanese government of not implementing the Declaration. They said: "The Lebanese government is a partner in this crime." The statement considered the efforts of the Lebanese-Syrian joint committee in the past six years as useless.