This story was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. VII, No. 10, April 15-21, 2007

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Families Long for Missing Relatives

The more the human rights community assails and protests human rights violations, particularly the killings and enforced disappearances, the more the perpetrators are emboldened to commit them.

BY DABET CASTAÑEDA
Bulatlat

SAN JOSE, Tarlac – Twins Budana and Betita Bumatay are barely three months old.  The elder Budana plays with her fingers while she lays down on a papag (a bed made of bamboo) while the younger Betita is fast asleep in a swing made of cheesecloth. Like other kids in the village, the twins are made to rest under the trees just in front of the house to avoid the scorching heat of the sun, especially during summer.

But unlike normal kids their age, the twins are taken care of not by their mother but only by their aunts. This has been the case since early morning of March 27 when eight burly armed men took their mother, 32-year-old Josephine Nogoy, away.

At around 1 a.m. of March 27, eight unidentified men, armed with rifles and wearing black long-sleeved shirts, gloves, ski-masks and combat boots, barged into the house of Nogoy’s sister-in-law Divina Guevarra. Nogoy and her twins have been staying at the Guevarra house in Barangay Iba, this town, since January, a week after Nogoy gave birth by caesarian operation on January 16. “Tinutulungan namin siya mag-alaga ng mga kambal kasi operada siya (We are helping her take care of the twins since she just went through an operation),” Guevarra explained.

Guevarra said five of the armed men held her and her family at gunpoint while the three others barged into the room of Nogoy and the twins. “Kadua, eto na! (Kadua, here it is now!)” Guevarra heared one of the armed men saying, referring to Nogoy.

The three men then dragged the nursing mother outside the room. “Aray (Ouch),” Guevarra heard Nogoy saying. “Ate, si Betita walang kasama sa kuwarto (Elder sister, Betita does not have anybody with her inside the room)” were the last words Guevarra heard from Nogoy before the latter was forced inside a waiting van.

Nogoy, a native of Capas town, also in Tarlac, and her husband, Tirso Bumatay, have been tagged by the police as New People’s Army (NPA) guerillas, Iba Barangay Secretary Patrocinio Basco said.

“Wala akong ebidensya pero sa paniwala ko, mga sundalo ang kumuha doon sa babae (I do not have evidence but I believe that the soldiers took the woman),” Basco said. “Kung may kasalanan sa batas, sana kinasuhan na lang nila sa korte. Mahirap yung ginawa nila, kawawa yung mga bata (If she violated the law, she should have just been charged in court. What they did was detrimental to the children.),” Basco added.

Relatives’ efforts to find Nogoy in detention centers and military camps have been futile.

16 abductions

Nogoy is just one of 16 individuals who have been abducted since January, records from the human rights group Desaparecidos (Families of the Desaparecidos for Justice) show. (See Table 1) Two of those abducted have turned up dead.

Like Nogoy, five of those abducted were women. The latest victim who has fallen prey to the death squad operations is Ma. Luisa Posa-Dominado, a member of the Panay chapter of Society of Ex-Detainees against Detention and for Amnesty (SELDA).

Posa-Dominado, a political detainee in the 1980s, was abducted together with Nilo Arado, a member of the Panay chapter of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN, New Patriotic Alliance), at around 10 p.m. of April 12 while traveling in Oton town, province of Iloilo. They were taken by the same unidentified armed men who shot their companion, Jose Ely Garachico, secretary general of the Panay chapter of Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of Peoples’ Rights).

As of press time, Garachico, a 50-year-old human rights worker since martial law, is receiving medical attention at the intensive care unit of a local hospital.

Source: Desaparecidos

In the morning of April 12, a coordinator of Kabataan Partylist was abducted in Lapu-Lapu town, Cebu City. Beethoven Avila, 28, was accosted by unidentified men. He was missing until his wife Beverly and human rights workers found him detained in Camp Sergio Osmeña in Cebu City. It was later learned that agents of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) abducted Avila. The victim was, however, released morning of April 14.

Indiscriminate

Victims of abductions and enforced disappearances are not just activists and suspected guerillas. They also include those who have been “inactive” in the people’s movement or those who have decided to live a quiet life and have been forced to be sidelined because of illnesses.

Such was the case of Abner Hizarsa, 55, a native of Makati City.

In an interview with his wife Cris, 47, she said that Hizarsa was riding a tri-bike and was on his way to the Ilwas Elementary School to ferry lunch for his 10-year-old daughter, Shara, when two unidentified men alighted from a white L-300 van and accosted the victim.

A witness whose name is withheld for security reasons said that at about 10:30 am on March 22 the same van was parked in front of a bakery a few meters from the Hizarsa home.

Another witness whose identity is also withheld said one of the two men who forced Hizarsa into the van was wearing fatigue.

When Cris learned of the abduction, she immediately went to the military detachment in their village to look for her husband. “Walang ibang kukuha sa kanya kundi mga sundalo (No one else would take him except the soldiers),” Cris said. She is worried about her husband’s condition given his heart ailment.

On March 19, soldiers from the 24^th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army (IB PA) have encamped inside the Ilwas village hall and have made it their temporary detachment.

Witnesses told Bulatlat that a certain Lt. Col Felipe Anotado, 24^th IB commander, had allegedly told residents that the soldiers would ask “suspected” residents to “surrender” and, in turn, would be given livelihood projects.

Four-time detainee

Hizarsa has been arrested and detained four times since martial law. His abduction on March 22 was his fifth.

His first arrest was in 1978 where he was detained for a few months in Camp Olivas in Pampanga. He was again arrested and detained for five years at the PC-INP Detention Center in Makinayan, Olongapo City. He escaped sometime in 1985 and went underground. He resurfaced as the spokesperson for the communist-led National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) – Bataan local chapter during the peace talks with the Aquino government in 1986.

As peace talks did not prosper after the massacre of 13 farmers during a rally in Mendiola on Jan. 22, 1987, Hizarsa again went underground but was arrested again in Oct. 1989. He was detained until December of the same year and again escaped his captors.

In 1992, Hizarsa was again arrested and was detained at the Bulacan Provincial Jail until he was released on bail in 1993.

It was in 1995 that doctors detected complications in his heart and he was advised to slow down. In 2000, Hizarsa and his family decided to settle in Subic, province of Zambales, where they survived with meager earnings from a sari-sari (variety) store.

As it turns out, there has been a standing warrant of arrest against Hizarsa and five others since May 31, 2000. The six individuals were charged with “frustrated murder with direct assault upon an agent of a person in authority” and were allowed to pay a P200,000 ($4,174.93, based on an exchange rate of P47.905 per US dollar) bail.

It was only on March 22, a few hours after Hizarsa was abducted, that his family learned there was a standing warrant against him.

"The continuing executions and abductions show that it is more than business as usual for state forces, they are doing the business more briskly and with more impunity.   We also note with alarm that the perpetrators are resorting more to abductions and disappearances now that extrajudicial killings have been condemned,” Jigs Clamor, Karapatan deputy secretary general said. "It is as if the more the human rights community assails and protests these dastardly acts, the more the perpetrators are emboldened to commit them.” Bulatlat

© 2007 Bulatlat ■  Alipato Publications

Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.