Unsilenced

Visiting Italian Lawyer Gabriella Citroni, in a forum marking the International Day of the Disappeared (which was actually last Monday) at the University of the Philippines, said a person disappearing does not follow logic.

“People are born, they live and they die. They don’t disappear,” she said. But it happens. In the Philippines the practice is more known as “salvaging” a cruel play on the word that means “saving”.

Citroni, a professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca, has been active in the United Nations effort to ratify and eventually implement the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances.

Sen. Miriam Santiago files a bill making enforced disappearances a crime.

Citroni said Enforced Disappearances start with deprivation of liberty, followed by concealment or denial of the victim.

In searching for the disappeared kin, relatives often are met with questions by law enforcement authorities, “Who is he? Is there such a person?”

“Can you think of a much worse human brutality than someone telling you that your loved one never existed”, she asked.

Yesterday’s forum was also the launching of the film documentary “Unsilenced” about desaparecidos in the Philippines.

“Unsilenced”, directed by King Mark Baco took off from the case of six workers of PICOP (Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines) in Agusan del Sur who disappeared after they were picked up by soldiers belonging to the 62nd Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army on October 14, 2000.They were Joseph Belar, Jovencio Lagare, Romualdo Orcullo, Diosdado Oliver, Artemio Ayala, and Arnold Dangkiasan.

Ten years have passed. One, Cpl Rodrigo Billones, has been convicted in 2008. The other officers have not made been made accountable for their crime and have, in fact, been promoted.

FIND and AFAD lauded the refusal of the families the PICOP 6 to be silenced. “With the growing support from the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates, AFAD and other kindred groups, the families are more inspired to pursue the fight to its final resolution, “ they said.

The two groups said the International Day of the Disappeared “was an occasion to revisit the chronicles of courage and self-sacrifice of the desaparecidos which remind us that the commission of involuntary disappearance particularly against suspected enemies of the state persists with impunity.

“The abominable global offense, a State-perpetrated violence, has spawned violations of practically all human rights. Precious lives are snuffed out, civil liberties curtailed voices of protest and resistance muffled amidst a chilling culture of impunity.

“Putting an end to enforced disappearance poses a great challenge to human rights advocates and defenders. Far greater is to successfully compel states to sign and ratify the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance and ensure that enforced disappearance constitutes a criminal offense in their statute books.

“Learning from the Philippine experience, it is possible to enact special laws criminalizing human rights violations. In November last year,t he Philippines enacted Republic Act No. 9745 or the Anti-Torture Law.Lamentably, the proposed law defining and penalizing enforced or involuntary disappearance still awaits congressional imprimatur even as the Convention remains unsigned.

AFAD and FIND appealed to President Aquino as well as the leaders of Timor Leste, India, Indonesia, Pakistan,Thailand and Nepal to take the lead in the signing and ratification of the Convention.

To date, the Convention has 83 signatories and 19 state parties (India is a signatory but not a state party. TheNetherlands is reported to have virtually reserved for the 20th slot that will mark the Convention’s entry into force.

The joint statement asked: “Shouldn’t AFAD’s member organizations’ respective states and other Asian states race to be the 20th state party and show the world that they are sincere in upholding human dignity and human rights more particularly the right not to be disappeared?”