International Day of the Disappeared commemorated
Desaparecidos, KARAPATAN, the Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace and the Sons and Daughters of the Disappeared commemorated on June 4 the International Day of the Disappeared. It is a day for remembering those abducted by the fascists both during the Marcos dictatorship and subsequent regimes and have not been surfaced since.
At 759, the number of persons who involuntarily disappeared at the height of the Marcos dictatorship from 1972 to 1981 is already big.
However, cases of involuntary disappearance grew even after the downfall of the dictatorship and the so-called restoration of democracy in the country. During the Aquino regime, the number of desaparecidos came to 821 (based on KARAPATAN reports), with most of them disappearing when the regime was waging its total war against the revolutionary movement.
Thirty-nine persons went missing during the Ramos regime and 26 persons during the time of Estrada.
In Gloria Arroyo's three years of office, KARAPATAN recorded 3,150 human rights violations involving the government's military, police and paramilitary personnel. There were 160 cases of forced evacuation affecting 15,096 families and 112,664 individuals from January 21, 2001 to June 1, 2004.
This period was also marked by the unjust killing by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) of 200 persons in 2003. According to Amnesty International (AI), the killings were in violation of all judicial and legal processes. AI likewise recorded the forced evacuation of 400,000 persons from their communities due to military operations against Moro rebels.
Meanwhile, almost all of the over 300 political prisoners whose release the National Democratic Front (NDF) has demanded as part of the confidence-building measures of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) vis a vis the NDF, remain incarcerated. Only 17 political prisoners have been released since the peace negotiations resumed in the first week of January.
| 
