YESTERDAY was the International Day of the Disappeared, created to draw attention to the fate of individuals imprisoned at places and under poor conditions – or even killed – unknown to their relatives and/or legal representatives.
Our country has a long history of enforced disappearances, numbering over two thousand since the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos when martial law was enacted in 1972. Forty years after, in 2012 President Benigno Aquino III approved Republic Act 10353, the Anti-Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance Act of 2012. The law primarily targets state agents and officials who confine or arrest individuals without proper process and detain those individuals outside the law’s protection.
But like any other law, Republic Act 10353 must be enforced effectively to serve its purpose. For example, the anti-torture law was enacted in 2009 yet but human rights violations involving torture continue despite the law prohibiting and criminalizing it.
Victims of enforced disappearances are called desaparecidos. Iloilo has at least two. The most prominent were Ilonggo activists Maria Luis Posa-Dominado and Nilo Arado. Eleven years ago on April 12, 2007 – yes, long after Marcos’ martial law – they were abducted by suspected military or paramilitary men in Oton, Iloilo. Up to now families, friends and colleagues do not know what happened to them or where they are.
According to the “Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance” proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Dec. 18, 1992, an enforced disappearance occurs when “persons are arrested, detained or abducted against their will or otherwise deprived of their liberty by officials of different branches or levels of Government, or by organized groups or private individuals acting on behalf of, or with the support, direct or indirect, consent or acquiescence of the Government, followed by a refusal to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the persons concerned or a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of their liberty, which places such persons outside the protection of the law.”
While the killing of a loved one is painful, the involuntary disappearance of one is even more excruciating. Victims’ families endure years of uncertainty, and are therefore unable to grieve. This is emotional and psychological torture.
Republic Act 10353 is considered a milestone as it is the first law of its kind in Asia. But again, the government must make sure this law is taken seriously, and implemented.
