AFP denies holding 2 missing students

The military denied yesterday it was holding two student activists who disappeared more than a month ago after the Supreme Court ordered Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan, chief of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division, accused of abuses by human rights groups, to produce them.

The parents of University of the Philippines students Sherlyn Cadapan, 23, and Karen Empeno, 29, petitioned the Supreme Court to order the military to disclose their whereabouts, alleging that soldiers seized them during a research trip in Bulacan last June 26.

Both women are members of left-wing youth groups.

The Court of Appeals ordered Palparan and other military officers to produce the students, along with their guide, Manuel Merino, a 57-year-old farmer, in court yesterday.

Empeno, 23, was a sociology major doing research in farming communities. Cadapan, 29, who is pregnant, was a former student council officer involved in research for a farmers’ group in Bulacan.

Assistant Solicitor General Amparo Tang told the court that Palparan and Maj. Gen. Romeo Tolentino, chief of the Armed Forces Northern Luzon Command, could not attend because they were busy with the 7th ID’s eighth anniversary celebration in Nueva Ecija.

The parents’ lawyer, Rex Fernandez, asked that the military officers be held in contempt for their "cavalier" attitude toward the court.

The appellate court’s 12th division chaired by Associate Justice Ely John Asuncion did not rule immediately and ordered both parties to submit their statements next Monday.

Armed Forces chief Lt. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon protested the court action.

"I do not know if the court has a basis for ordering the (military) to produce what has not been proven to be with us," he told reporters.

"We will assist, we will help, but to make us produce missing persons would be just like saying that we were responsible for their disappearance," he added.

Witness Wilfredo Ramos, 14, told the court that he saw five men in civilian clothes drag the women to a mini-bus in a farming village in Hagonoy, Bulacan.

The men, carrying M-16 rifles, looked like soldiers because they were wearing combat boots, he said.

The men first searched their house, tied Ramos and his father up, then proceeded to their neighbor’s house where the two students were staying.

Alberto Ramirez, a human rights activist from Hagonoy, also testified that 10 armed men took him to a military detachment two days after the women’s abduction.

He said he was interrogated about communist rebels, including two women who fit the students’ description.

The disappearances were the latest in a string of attacks on left-wing members and sympathizers who the military blames for supporting a 37-year-old communist rebellion.

The human rights group Karapatan said that since President Arroyo came to power in 2001, 717 civilians, including 305 left-wing activists, have been killed by suspected government security forces.

Mrs. Arroyo earlier condemned political killings and gave police 10 weeks to make arrests. — Jose Rodel Clapano