Journalist Paco Lobatón, vice president of the European Foundation for Missing Persons QSDGlobal, warned this Saturday that, “when a person disappears, their rights do not disappear and the first of them is the right to be searched.”
This was claimed during his speech at the closing of the First International Conference on Missing Persons, held in Seville, in which he also claimed the “right” of his family and friends to “be informed of the search and cared for psychologically, legally and socially.” “, as the organization specified in a statement issued at the end of what it considered an “unprecedented meeting.”
More than seventy relatives of missing persons have gathered “in the most diverse circumstances” in Mexico, the United Kingdom, Italy, Senegal or France, as well as experts from the State Security Forces and Bodies, psychologists and psychiatrists, criminologists. , jurists, institutional positions related to gender violence, volunteers and communication professionals, who, according to Lobatón, are “united” by the “deep nexus” of the “open wound called uncertainty” around a phenomenon that in Spain currently registers 6,001 active cases.
DANA
The conference was held with the DANA catastrophe that hit Valencia still very much in mind and, in this sense, it also valued the “exemplary response in many ways” and which, in its opinion, “however, has only minimized in a small the impressive dimensions of the greatest emergency experienced in Spain”.
Within the framework of the conference, several scientific works were also presented, one of which focused on the perception that families have of the investigation process of the missing person and its possible revictimizing effects and which, according to Lobatón, “seek to improve the response to the corrosive and limiting suffering of uncertainty that leaves no room for grief. That leaves life in suspense. That makes those who suffer it hostage to a thousand questions. Survivors in a limbo full of shadows.
In this context, he emphasized the “recurrent” demand by these families for the intervention of the UCO, a request, which, in his understanding, “is basically the demand for Specialized Units for Disappeared Persons that the families and the associative movement they have been doing for twenty years”.
Children, adults and women
Before the closing, several presentations were held, among which the organization cited that of the Argentine doctor in Criminology Facundo Gallo, researcher at the University of La Rioja and author of the book ‘The Unforgotten’, focused on his works that relate related crimes. with child pornography with the disappearance of minors.
The closing day continued with workshops such as ‘The neurodegenerative disease of Alzheimer’s and other dementias in cases of disappearances’, in which relatives of missing people participated, who delved into the need for “constant prevention”, as well as geolocation “permanent” of these people.
For her part, the head of the Viogen system service of the State Secretariat for Security (Ministry of the Interior), Leticia Matarranz, opened the session dedicated to ‘Violence against women. Disappearances and feminicides’, in which she insisted that, in many cases, “before a disappearance there has already been an act of gender violence.”
“Statistics tell us that it takes up to eight years for a woman victim of gender violence to report it for the first time. Family support is essential here; a seamless circle must be created from the family, police and judicial point of view” , he asserted.
In this sense, Antonio Zurera, brother of Angelines Zurera, who disappeared in 2008 twelve days after having reported an attack by her ex-partner and obtaining a final sentence against her abuser, also participated in the event, as did Marisol Burón, mother of Marta Calvo, disappeared in 2019 after meeting a man she had contacted over the Internet.
“Mine is a story very similar to that of Marta del Castillo. My daughter was the victim of a depraved psychopath, she has been missing for five years and only her murderer knows where she is,” she denounced, visibly moved.
Finally, the program also included addressing disappearances at borders and war conflicts, with the participation, among others, of Helena Maleno, founder of the Caminando Fronteras collective, as well as disappearances at sea, with the protagonism of the relatives of missing on the ship Villa de Pitantxo.
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