IN PHOTOS: Families of desaparecidos renew call for justice on All Souls’ Day

Families of victims of enforced disappearances said the practice continues in the Philippines despite a 2012 law criminalizing it, citing 15 documented cases under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and what they described as continuing impunity.

Desaparecidos, or Families of the Disappeared for Justice, raised the concern during an All Souls’ Day gathering at the Claret School Chapel in Quezon City on Nov. 2.

A Mass was followed by a program in which families called for the surfacing of their missing relatives and accountability for those responsible.

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Desaparecidos chair and spokesperson JL Burgos said enforced disappearances have continued despite Republic Act 10353, or the Anti-Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance Act.

“Under Benigno Aquino III under whose regime the law was enacted,” he said, “there were nine documented cases of enforced disappearance, 20 under Duterte and 15 so far under Ferdinand Marcos Jr. They join more than 1,900 victims of enforced disappearance since the Marcos Sr. regime.”

Burgos said enforced disappearance is a state-perpetrated or state-sanctioned crime and that impunity has allowed it to continue.

The group also said legal remedies such as the writs of amparo, habeas data and habeas corpus have failed to result in the surfacing of victims or the prosecution of those responsible.

It cited the case of abduction survivors Jonila Castro and Jhed Tamano, who filed criminal and administrative complaints against government and military officials over their alleged kidnapping and detention in September 2023.

Desaparecidos said the Office of the Ombudsman dismissed the complaints.

The complaints, filed in 2024, included allegations of arbitrary detention, grave coercion and violations of the Anti-Torture Law. The group said they also marked the first case filed under the Anti-Enforced Disappearance Act.

Desaparecidos also criticized successive Philippine governments for failing to ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

It said the government has sought since 2019 to delist more than 600 cases from the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, citing what it described as a “strong legal framework and institutional mechanisms to address enforced disappearances.”

Participants in the Nov. 2 gathering wore white and headscarves bearing the words “Surface All Desaparecidos.”

The group compared the scene to the Madres de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, mothers of those who were forcibly disappeared during the country’s dirty war and who wore white headscarves while demanding the surfacing of their missing children.

“With the government dead set on denying us the truth, the November 2 gathering is ultimately an act of defiance,” Burgos said.

He said families had not forgotten their missing loved ones, had not stopped searching for the truth behind their disappearance and would continue calling for them to be surfaced despite what he described as state efforts to threaten, harass or intimidate them.

All photos by Jire Carreon