On this International Day of the Disappeared, we reckon with the grim reality that defending the rights of the marginalized and protecting the environment can mean vanishing without a trace. Enforced disappearances remain to be a weapon of silence and submission.
Republic Act No. 10353, the Anti-Enforced Disappearance Act, was passed in 2012 with much fanfare, but over a decade later, it serves as a hollow reminder of the state’s unfulfilled obligations. Not a single perpetrator has been prosecuted, convicted, or punished for any enforced disappearance. The desaparecidos remain missing with their families left in anguish, while witnesses lack the protection guaranteed by law. The Philippine government has also obstinately refused to ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons Against Enforced Disappearance.
Today, Francisco “Eco” Dangla, an environmental rights activist who was abducted last March, takes a stand. As he files a petition for amparo and habeas data with the Supreme Court, he embodies a refusal to be intimidated and silenced. But as he chose to continue his work after being surfaced by military elements, his rights to life, liberty and security remain at peril. His recourse for judicial relief is, thus, not just a plea for protection; it is a radical act of assertion against a system where so many have been made to disappear.
We stand with Eco, just as we stand with Jed Tamano and Jonila Castro—survivors who bravely came forward to tell the stories the state would rather suppress. They are among the few who have lived to confront their captors and expose the extraordinary lengths by which citizens have to endure only to demand their right to exist.
We must ask ourselves: who gains from the silence of the missing? Who profits when those who stand against injustice are forever muzzled? Their disappearances are not random; they are deliberate acts of erasure designed to repress and extinguish the very spirit of resistance.
We remember and honor Jonas Burgos, Karen Empeño, Sherlyn Cadapan, Dexter Capuyan, Bazoo De Jesus, and the countless others who have been taken from us—not as martyrs to a distant cause but as enduring symbols of the struggle for truth and justice. We refuse the betrayal and mortal limitation of forgetting that comes with impunity.
We demand justice for Jonas, Karen, Sherlyn, Dexter, Bazoo, and for all those whose names we may never know. We stand firm in our resolve to seek justice, to bring the truth to light, and to ensure that these injustices are never forgotten.
References:
Atty. Ephraim B. Cortez
NUPL President
+639172092943
Atty. Josalee S. Deinla
NUPL Secretary General
+639174316396
