With no graves to visit, families of victims of enforced disappearances or desaparecidos gather each year on November 2 to remember their disappeared loved ones. Despite the grueling heat, the group Pamilya ng Desaparecidos Para sa Katarungan or Desaparecidos held an outdoor, morning program that included lighting of candles and offering of flowers to the disappeared and writing letters to Pope Francis in Plaza Miranda in front of Quiapo Church, Manila on this day.
“Beyond remembering, we come together as a reminder that our loved ones have yet to be surfaced and the state’s policy of enforced disappearances be stopped,” Desaparecidos secretary general Aya Santos said.
The families of the disappeared wrote letters to Pope Francis that they will send to the Vatican before the pope’s expected visit to the Philippines on January 15 to 19 next year. Desaparecidos is asking for the help of His Holiness to seek justice for the disappeared in this country.
“We turn to the Pope for support because under the current regime of Noynoy Aquino, human rights violations against the people intensify without let up,” Santos said.
Still searching
Edita Burgos, whose son Jonas Burgos disappeared seven years ago, wrote an open letter to President Benigno Aquino III earlier this year reminding him of his year-old promise for a “focused, dedicated and exhaustive investigation on the Jonas Burgos case.” The letter was written a day before the seventh year of her son’s disappearance on April 28.
“It has been 4 years that you have been Commander-in-Chief, yet we do not know the truth about Jonas. Mr. President, is there hope that the truth will finally be revealed while you are still in the position to make this happen?” Jonas’ mother lamented in her letter.
Jonas was eating in Hapag Kainan in Ever Gotesco Mall when he was forced into a waiting van by suspected military elements, in view of customers and employees of the restaurant. Jonas, son of veteran journalist Joe Burgos and former Desaparecidos chairperson Edita, was an agriculture graduate who was teaching organic farming to farmers in Bulacan at the time of his abduction.
Just last week, Ipelenio Soco or Ipe received a call from his older sister who wanted to confirm if he has heard the news that their mother Gloria Soco made a call to one of their cousins. Ipe’s older sister got the news from a relative in the province. The bit of news rekindled a spark of hope in the eight-year-old search, Ipe related. In the end, the siblings found out that the ‘news’ that has already spread in their province came from a cousin who “dreamt Aunt Gloria called.”
Conflicting emotions of excitement and frustration brought by this news made Ipe realize that the tragedy of his mother’s disappearance was as fresh as when he started the search. The gathering of the families of desaparecidos this November 2 gave Ipe a sense of comfort that many are still searching for their loved ones and for justice.
Gloria, described by Ipe as a plain housewife, was abducted with her uncle Prudencio Calubid while en route to Bicol on June 26, 2006. While searching for his mother, Ipe has since become an active volunteer of Desaparecidos.
Enforced disappearance as a state policy
Desaparecidos hit President Benigno Aquino III’s counterinsurgency program Oplan Bayanihan, which they say makes a state policy of the crime of enforced disappearances and completely disregards the Anti-Enforced Disappearance Law. The bill was signed into law by Aquino in 2012.
Santos said there have been 21 victims of enforced disappearances under Aquino.
According to human rights group Karapatan, there have been 1,872 desaparecidos since the administration of Ferdinand Marcos. The most number of desaparecidos under one president is 821 and was recorded during the term of the current Chief Executive’s mother, Corazon Aquino. Her ascension to presidency on the heels of the first EDSA People Power has been noted countless times as the marker for the restoration of democracy in the country and the end of Marcos’ dictatorship. Marcos’ own reign recorded 759 desaparecidos in Karapatan’s data.
