EDITORIAL - Remembering the disappeared

As lawmakers try to put together a complete picture of what happened during the bloody crackdown on drug personalities in the previous administration, the nation joined the world last Friday in remembering the desaparecidos.

The United Nations, which led the observance of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on Aug. 30, reported that in at least 85 countries, hundreds of thousands of people have vanished during periods of conflict or repression. The UN has been observing the special day since 2011, following the adoption of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

The Philippine Senate has yet to ratify this convention, although Congress passed a law way back in 2012 against enforced disappearance, becoming the first in Asia to do so. The law has not helped relatives of the Philippines’ desaparecidos find their missing loved ones.

FIND – the Families of victims of Involuntary Disappearance – has documented about 2,000 desaparecidos in the country as of June last year, most of them victims of the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos the elder. Another human rights group counts eight cases under the current Marcos administration.

Enforced disappearances did not end with the collapse of the first Marcos regime. Among the most notorious cases was the kidnapping in Bulacan and torture of University of the Philippines students Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan in 2006 by men under former Army Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan in 2006. Palparan at least has been convicted and is serving a life term, but Empeño and Cadapan remain missing.

In a statement to mark this year’s observance of the day of the disappeared, the UN said the problem is “more than a human rights violation against an individual.”

“Enforced disappearance has frequently been used as a strategy to spread terror within the society. The feeling of insecurity generated by this practice is not limited to the close relatives of the disappeared, but also affects their communities and society as a whole,” the UN declared.

It added: “Enforced disappearance has become a global problem and is not restricted to a specific region of the world. Once largely the product of military dictatorships, enforced disappearances can nowadays be perpetrated in complex situations of internal conflict, especially as a means of political repression of opponents.”

President Marcos, who has turned his back on his predecessor’s brutal approach to the drug scourge, must also commit to prevent the revival of enforced disappearance as a tool for national security.