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Statements of AFAD
Proceedings:
Articles on the Proceedings on the AFAD Leadership Training
Jan. 27 - 31, 2003, Philippines
AFAD Second Congress Resolutions
August 2003
Remembering Munir
AFAD Second Congress
August 26-30, 2003 in Bangkok, Thailand
AFAD’s Mid-Year Report
Ding Zilin's
Message To
Hong Kong
Again, The KONTRAS – IKOHI Office Was Attacked
“ If they are dead, tell us”!
My sons, where are they? |
AFAD Statement on the 2nd Year of Jonas Burgos’ Disappearance
April 28, 2009
The Struggle of Memory Against Forgetting…
"The struggle of people against power is the struggle of
memory against forgetting." Milan Kundera
28 April 2009 - Today marks the second year of the disappearance
of Jonas Burgos, the son of the late Filipino press freedom fighter,
Jose Burgos. Jonas was seized by armed men in broad daylight on 28 April
2007 from a mall in Quezon City, Philippines. For two years, we have
witnessed not only the pain and suffering of a grieving family but also
the incomparable courage and admirable strength of a united family
incessantly searching for Jonas, never leaving any stone unturned,
employing all peaceful means, using national and international avenues
in search for truth and justice. Our hearts bleed for Jonas’ one and
only daughter, who, according to her grandmother, Edita, continues to
wait for her dear Tati (father or Daddy) and would sometimes ask
if Jonas would bring her to school.
Today, on the second year of Jonas Burgos’ disappearance, we have
experienced yet another irony of ironies when the top military officer,
Jovito Palparan alleged to have been responsible for the spate of
killings and disappearances in the country since 2001, joins, on this
very day, the ranks of the members of the Philippine House of
Representatives – a manifestation of the cycle of impunity in a country
which boasts itself as a founding member of the UN Human Rights Council.
The case of Jonas Burgos has become a high-profile case of disappearance
in the Philippines not only due to his well-known surname, but
especially because at the height of the phenomenon of extrajudicial
killings and enforced disappearances in the country, his disappearance
exemplifies the many other countless and nameless victims of enforced
disappearances in the country since the assumption of President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo to power. The Burgos family has joined the other
families of victims of enforced disappearance that occurred since the
tyrannical and rapacious Marcos regime until the succeeding
administrations not only in their common pain of having lost their loved
ones, but also in their unified struggle for truth, justice, redress and
collective memory.
Two years have passed and Jonas remains missing. We salute his mother,
Edita. By her unrelenting spirit to search for her son, to file a case
in court, to use national avenues while maximizing available
international mechanisms, telling the world that in the Philippines, all
is not well in the human rights front, she has consequently earned the
ire of the alleged perpetrators of the disappearance of her son and,
thus, has also faced constant danger. Despite Edita’s and her family’s
courage and perseverance, truth and justice remain elusive.
Nevertheless, Edita’s unrelenting spirit has, in no small measure,
unmasked the cover up from the highest post to maliciously hide the
truth and to exonerate the perpetrators. No amount of hiding the truth
could stop people from pointing their fingers to the real culprits to
this treacherous act of disappearing a man deprived of life and liberty
because of his option to choose the road less trodden - to organize
farmers in their fight for genuine land reform, thus contributing to the
gargantuan task of social transformation.
Jonas Burgos’ case met a major setback in July 2008 when the Court of
Appeals ruled against his family’s petition for a Writ of Amparo . The
verdict stated that there was not enough evidence that the military
authorities are the ones responsible for the disappearance. Accordingly,
it is non sequitor that if the plate number of the car used to
forcibly take Jonas belonged to the military authorities, the latter
were the ones who took him. It is frustratingly unfortunate that the
Writ of Amparo, a relatively newly promulgated national mechanism
for human rights protection in the country, has miserably failed to
facilitate the resolution of the country’s very highly projected case of
enforced disappearance in recent years.
Despite seemingly insurmountable barriers, the Burgos family has never
been cowed into silence and never been paralyzed by fear. The two long
years of treading the thorny road to justice did not stop them from
searching, from struggling, from fighting for truth, justice, redress
and memory. In so doing, they have kept Jonas’ memory alive in their
hearts and in the hearts of all freedom-loving men and women. They have
continuously struggled, and in the words of Milan Kundera, theirs is a
“struggle of memory against forgetting.”
As the Burgos family commemorates the second year of Jonas’
disappearance, the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearance (AFAD)
once again expresses its solidarity with them and with all families of
the disappeared in the Philippines and in the rest of the world. We
commend Edita, who, by her very personal experience of losing her son,
has become a very courageous human rights defender, whose faith-based
advocacy is remarkably amazing. In the Inter-faith Conference on
Enforced Disappearance sponsored by AFAD in December 2008, she spoke
before the representatives of different church groups and families of
the disappeared saying that never did (and does) she nurture hatred in
her heart, in fact, she even prayed and continues to pray for her son’s
torturers and despite the pain, she had resolved to forgive them without
ceasing the struggle to fight for truth and justice for her son and for
other victims of enforced disappearances. Deep inside her, she believes
that Jonas did not just make a supreme sacrifice of serving his people
for nothing. He did it for the love of his country.
On this occasion, AFAD reaffirms its commitment to never again allow
this malady to happen. It shall continue to collectively fight against
the scourge of enforced disappearance in Asia and in the rest of the
world. In so doing, the Federation will continue to give its modest
share in the struggle for a world without desaparecidos - a world
where no mothers to grieve for their disappeared children, where no
children to be orphaned, no more families of desaparecidos to ask
the nagging question, " Where are you?"
Never again!
Signed by:
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MUGIYANTO |
MARY AILEEN D. BACALSO |
| Chairperson |
Secretary-General |
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