HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

Day of the Disappeared
Rights Group Urges Passage of Bill Vs. Enforced Disappearance 

As the rank of desaparecidos grows nationwide, a human rights group says it becomes more urgent to pass the proposed bill criminalizing enforced disappearance.

BY DEE AYROSO
Bulatlat

Enforced or involuntary disappearance has been called the “worst form of human rights violation” and “a crime against humanity”. International human rights law describes it as the disappearance of a person at the hand of the state. The families of the disappeared, who often spend the rest of their lives searching for their missing loved ones, also become victims, neither having the remains to bury nor any proof of death or life. A tarpaulin sheet of pictures of desaparecidos

Enforced disappearances are usually aimed to silence the victim himself and sow terror in the community or among members of a target group, such as activists – effectively silencing both the current and potential voices of dissent. Enforced disappearances entail the violation of basic human rights, such as the rights to liberty, personal security, humane treatment, fair trial, equal protection under the law, and be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

June 4 is observed as the International Day of the Disappeared. Enforced disappearances became prevalent in Latin America where agents of tyrannical regimes implemented it as a policy against political dissenters.  Thus, desaparecido, the Spanish term for “the disappeared”, became the term for those who were abducted and vanished by their own government. In the Philippines, it is usually associated with the Marcos dictatorship. But recently, human rights groups report that the rank of desaparecidos under the Macapagal-Arroyo government has been growing.

Karapatan (rights), a human rights alliance, said this makes the passing of a bill criminalizing enforced disappearance more urgent. The law would help deter would-be perpetrators, said the rights group.

House Bill 4959, the consolidated bill defining and penalizing enforced disappearance has been passed on third reading at the House of Representatives on June 1. The bill was a consolidation of HB 1556 authored by representatives of the party-list groups Bayan Muna, Anakpawis and Gabriela, and HB 11 mainly authored by Rep. Edcel Lagman.

The bill aims to penalize perpetrators of enforced disappearance, or when one is removed from the protection of the law for 36 hours, such as when a person was arrested or abducted and deprived of his rights to a counsel or to inform his family.  

The bill clearly defines the crime as one committed by agents or officials of government, or other “private individuals acting in behalf of” the government. It will also prohibit solitary detention and “secret detention places” or safehouses.

Life imprisonment will be meted out on proven perpetrators.

Some 2,000 Missing

The first documented Martial law desaparecido was 27-year-old Charlie del Rosario, youth leader of Kabataang Makabayan and Movement for a Democratic Philippines who disappeared on March 19, 1971.  Del Rosario was abducted by suspected intelligence agents inside the campus of the Lyceum of the Philippines (now the Polytechnic University of the Philippines) in Manila.  

Today, the number of desaparecidos could reach 2,000: 759 under the Marcos Dictatorship, 810 under the Aquino administration, 19 under Ramos, and 38 under the three-year Estrada administration.  

For the five years under the Arroyo administration, some 168 victims of forced disappearance had been documented by Karapatan as of May this year. Some who were abducted turned up as “salvage” (summary execution) victims, but most remain missing.  

The perpetrators, mostly identified by witnesses as elements of the military, police and paramilitia groups, remain unchecked and unpunished.  In some cases, there were no witness to the abduction, which makes it difficult to identify the specific unit involved.  Human rights advocates, however insist that from the Martial law era to the present, state agents hold a track record and have been the most capable in committing such crime against perceived enemies of the state.

It has been a known practice by AFP and police elements to bring victims of warrantless arrests to safehouses, where they are interrogated and tortured before charges are filed against them in court.  The latest of such case was that of the Erap 5 who were abducted in Quezon City by members of the Intelligence Service of the AFP, and were interrogated while tied and blindfolded for two days before they were surfaced and charged in court.  One of the five, Ruben Dionisio cried that he was tortured and forced to admit that he was a member of the New People’s Army.

Most victims of warrantless arrests took even weeks before they were surfaced, so as to heal torture wounds.  In most cases, the victims were never found.

Under the proposed law, any person detaining or keeping a victim of forced disappearance has the duty to report the victim’s whereabouts to his family, a legal counsel, and to nearest office of the police, the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the local government unit, Commission on Human Rights and a human rights group.

The proposed law aims to ease the search of the victims’ families as it compels the police, the AFP, the National Bureau of Investigation, and even hospitals and morgues to put in writing the result of an investigation or any other information about a forced disappearance.

Families of desaparecido will be given indemnification by the government under the proposed law.  If passed, the law will form a monitoring group to be composed by the Commission on Human Rights and the Department of Justice, which will work closely with the relatives of the victims, the police, AFP, representatives of the two houses of Congress and human rights groups.

A relative of desaparecido who requested anonymity said that even if the bill was passed, it might have been too late for her kin, although it could help discourage more abductions. 

“It would be more effective if it would be implemented by a new administration which would ensure that human rights violators in our society will be punished,” she said.

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