Don’t remove 625 cases of disappearances, UN urged

MANILA, Philippines — The 625 cases of involuntary disappearances in the Philippines should be kept in the records of the United Nations and not removed as requested by the Duterte administration, a group advocating justice for victims of forced disappearance said yesterday.

“We appeal to the UN to raise to the Duterte government how it has perpetuated enforced disappearances by looking into the cases of enforced disappearances under the current administration, and how it has broken existing laws by covering up for such,” said Cristina Guevarra, secretary-general of the Families of the Disappeared for Justice or Desaparecidos.

Guevarra addressed her appeal specifically to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID). She said the body should keep open the 625 cases and investigate others that have not been reported to the body.

“The Duterte government should not be believed in its claims that the mere presence of so-called legal mechanisms, or even recognition, is equivalent to providing space for respite for the victims. This move of delisting desaparecidos is a malicious scheme to hide its own crimes of disappearances and impunity,” Guevarra explained.

The group said 40 years and counting from the martial law dictatorship to the present, victims remain uncertain of the whereabouts of their loved ones, alive or dead.

“Despite the passage of the Anti-Enforced Disappearance Law, not a single state agent has been convicted and punished for carrying out enforced disappearances. Even the conviction of retired Army general Jovito Palparan was not because of the Duterte government’s adherence to existing ‘legal framework and institutional mechanisms.’ It was the families of desaparecidos who endured every difficult step to pursue the perpetrators,” said Erlinda Cadapan, mother of desaparecido Sherlyn Cadapan and chair of Desaparecidos.

The group said Palparan has yet to be punished under Republic Act 10353 or the Anti-Enforced Disappearance Law. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of kidnapping with serious illegal detention for the abduction and disappearance of Sherlyn and another UP student in 2006.