Military looking men
But Desaparecidos, the group of relatives of the disappeared, said this reelection to the council has not reflected in any show of respect, much less protection of human rights of Filipinos, as shown by the rising cases of disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
Guerrero, 40, recounted that his captors repeatedly hit him with all sorts of objects, including a water bottle. He was handcuffed and a plastic bag was put over his head. Guerrero said he passed out twice during the ordeal and urinated in his pants. They threatened to kill me, burn me or bury me, he said.
The men, whom he described as military looking, also took his laptop, erased its contents and replaced these with subversive documents.
They called me pastor impostor, he said, and lectured me on the evils of Communism and how the church, legal peoples organizations are used to create trouble by criticizing the government.
The countrys police chief, Oscar Calderon, said last week that there may have been lapses in the arrest of Guerrero and that the victim was just turned over to the police after he was nabbed by intelligence agents of the navy. He promised to investigate the incident. This matter is being looked into and we will file cases against those who will be found guilty,” he said.
Since Guerreros abduction, two more activists have disappeared. One of them, Gabriel Rey Cardio, a Bayan Muna coordinator in Cotabato, was snatched on June 6 by men believed to be police officers. Two days later, Cardino, 27, was found wandering along a highway, shocked and bruised. His group claimed that he had been tortured.
The most celebrated case in recent years was the abduction of Jonas Burgos, a farmer who is also an official of a leftist peasant group in Bulacan, a province north of Manila. On April 28, suspected military agents grabbed Burgos and two companions inside a mall in Quezon City.
A public outcry ensued, in which even former president Corazon Aquino got involved. Burgos is the son of the late Jose Burgos Jr., perhaps the countrys most respected journalist who was among the first to challenge the Marcos dictatorship and who went on to gain prominence in the international media community as a press-freedom fighter.
The car used by Burgos abductors had a plate that was later traced to a vehicle that had been impounded at a military camp. The military denied that it had anything to do with Burgoss abduction, even claiming that Communists stole the plate from the military compound and used it in the kidnapping of the young Burgos.
The military not only refused to participate in the investigation conducted by the Commission on Human Rights, a constitutional body it also said that it was now trying to establish Burgoss ties with the communists. Burgoss relatives, as well as his fellow activists, took this as an admission by the military that it had in fact abducted Burgos and was now trying to justify it.
In late May, when Burgoss family, friends and fellow activists held a demonstration in front of the armys headquarters in Manila, soldiers put up speakers in front of the protesters and played obscene songs so loud that they drowned out the speeches — among them by Burgoss mother — demanding that the military surface Burgos.
The disappearances have become so frequent that a congressman, Satur Ocampo, himself an activist who was detained and tortured during the Marcos regime, has filed a bill in Congress criminalizing enforced disappearances.
Although considered a crime against humanity in international laws, there is no statute on enforced disappearances in the Philippine. Ocampos proposed law, which has been approved by Congress and is awaiting approval in the Senate, is much needed to provide a legal framework that would put stiff penalties on those proven guilty as perpetrators, accessories or even witnesses who refuse to inform the victim’s relatives or the authorities, he said.
A key feature of the bill is that it distinguishes enforced disappearances as an offense mostly by agents of the government or commissioned private individuals. The rationale for this, Ocampo said, is that in past administrations, enforced disappearance is a part of a state policy mainly against dissenters. (Carlos H. Conde/davaotoday.com)
