Enforced disappearances, persecution: a long story

Over the past 51 years – spanning eight presidencies, from Marcos Sr.’s 14-year dictatorship to Marcos Jr.’s first year in Malacañang – at least 2,130 individuals have become victims of “enforced or involuntary disappearance” (abduction and disappearance).

As documented by the human rights alliance Karapatan, almost half of the 2,130 “disappeared” under Marcos Sr.’s rule. For each succeeding administration, the tallies are: Corazon Aquino, 821; Fidel Ramos, 39; Joseph Estrada, 26; Gloria Arroyo, 206; Benigno Aquino III, 9; Rodrigo Duterte, 20; Marcos Jr, 8.

On Aug. 30, observed as “International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances,” activists, relatives and friends of the victims rallied at the Court of Appeals, where a petition for habeas corpus, demanding the surfacing of Dexter Corpus and Gene Roz Jamil de Jesus, is pending court action. The two activists were abducted in Taytay, Rizal last April 28.

Denouncing the continuing enforced disappearances, the rallyists called for the surfacing of the eight victims under Marcos Jr.’s watch and “a stop to the looming recurrence of the repressive tactics of the dictator Marcos under his son’s regime.”

In 2012, Congress enacted the Anti-Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance Act (RA 10353). It has largely been ignored or breached by law enforcement authorities, along with another legislation declaring torture as a crime and prescribing penalties for its violation.

The human rights organizations Karapatan, Selda (former political prisoners) and Hustisya (families of the victims) vowed to stand in solidarity and continue fighting to attain justice for the “desaparecidos” – and exact accountability from the perpetrators of the crime.

It may take time, but hope cannot be lost. That’s the case in Chile, where thousands were also forcibly disappeared during the 17-year regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990, the same period as the Marcos dictatorship here).

Last Aug. 30, President Gabriel Boric (a celebrated former Leftist student leader) announced that he was assuming responsibility for finding the remains of those forcibly disappeared and executed under Pinochet’s bloody rule.

It was not a mere publicity pronouncement. Boric vowed to launch a national search plan, seek to establish the circumstances under which each person was forcibly disappeared, guarantee access to government records and provide reparations to the victims’ families.

Of the 40,175 persons registered as victims of crimes under Pinochet, 1,092 are listed as forcibly disappeared and victims of political executions. Since 1990, the remains of 307 such persons have been found and identified.

In our country, such injustices continue. This is the lamentation voiced by the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP), who say they are being persecuted, via the judicial system, by the former National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. and the red-baiting NTF-ELCAC.

Because of this, they say, for more than two years now, the RMP has been unable to access their bank accounts for use in their mission activities. Altogether 15 bank accounts – four of the RMP national office and 11 of the RMP-Northern Mindanao – have been subjected to a civil forfeiture case pursued by the government’s security forces, who allege that these funds were being used for “financing terrorism.”

Last Wednesday, the RMP began its defense presentation before the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 18, presided over by Executive Judge Carolina C. Icasiano-Sison.

“These trumped-up charges have been difficult to bear for us rural missionaries,” said the RMP Leadership Team. “Our hearts are committed to serving the poor. These false charges by the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) have been a significant burden for us. We long to enjoy the freedom to help the most marginalized and under-served farmers, farmworkers, indigenous peoples and fisherfolk.”

The fisherfolk national organization Pamalakaya’s chairperson, Fernando Hicap, affirmed the RMP Leadership Team’s statement. “Many communities rely on the accompaniment and development services of the RMP,” he attested. “From peasants in the mountains of Negros to fisherfolk on the shores of Rizal, rural missionaries have been integral in helping many marginalized communities. The poor are the ones suffering the most from the attacks on the RMP.”

Alluding to RMP’s accusers, Dr. Leni Jara of the non-governmental Council for Health and Development (CHD) remarked: “Don’t they know that Rural Missionaries are trying to address the roots of armed conflict in rural areas? They were at the forefront of rural health programs.”

Three Catholic nuns from the RMP founded the Community-Based Health Program in 1973, Jara recalled. “RMP priests, nuns and lay missionaries are some of the most selfless and noble persons you can meet. It is ridiculous to accuse them of financing or supporting terrorism,” she added.

Over the next weeks, the RMP and their legal team will continue the defense presentation in court. “They’ll prove that funds from project sources have been used properly and audited closely – and that none of these were used by either RMP or RMP-Northern Mindanao to finance terrorism,” the Leadership Team asserted.

Providing context to the RMP case, Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay explained:

“The State, with its counterinsurgency program through the ‘whole-of-nation approach’ and NTF-ELCAC, is using terrorism legislations to attempt to persecute and falsely label progressive organizations as supporters of terrorism, thus vilifying them… The false allegations against the RMP are among the ‘test cases’ for this new type of malicious attacks.”

Interestingly, the NTF-ELCAC Legal Cooperation Cluster (LCC, headed by a state prosecutor), in a statement issued on Aug. 30, bristled over a report that Malacañang’s Presidential Communications Office itself had asserted a “program or policy” against red-tagging.

Reminding the officials of the PCO that “red-tagging is legally inexistent and is a mere propaganda term that was invented by the CTGs [communist-terrorist groups]”, the LCC sought to downplay the dire consequences of what NTF-ELCAC does.

“We wish to highlight to our fellow public servants,” it said, “that when the government identifies a particular person or group of persons as affiliated with the CNN [CPP-NPA-NDF], the government is not accusing or prosecuting (them) but is merely revealing or unmasking their real identities based on available information or ‘intelligence’.”