National-democratic groups, together with families, friends and supporters of the victims of state-instigated forced disappearances, commemorated the International Day of the Desaparecidos on August 30.

On the day, Eco Dangla, a victim of state abduction, went to the Supreme Court to file a petition for writ of amparo and habeas data. Dangla, along with Jak Tiong, were abducted in San Carlos City, Pangasinan on March 24. The state kept them in hiding and subjected them to torture for four days before they were surfaced.

National-democratic groups launched a protest in front of the Supreme Court to demand the surfacing of all the missing persons and to hold the military, police and reactionary state accountable for this violence, alongside Dangla’s filing.

Meanwhile, youth groups went to Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City to indict the AFP for the abduction and disappearance of Rowena Dasig, a young environmental and human rights defender from Calabarzon. Dasig was reported missing after being “released” from the Lucena City District Jail on August 22. Her relatives and lawyers have yet to find her.

Since Marcos came to power, at least 14 have been abducted that have not been surfaced to date. Aside from Dasig, James Jazminez, brother of NDFP consultant Alan Jazminez, was also reported missing since August 23.

“Enforced disappearance has long been employed by tyrannical regimes as a strategy to spread terror within a society,” Karapatan said. “The families, support systems and communities of the victims often experience harassment and other hardships in the course of their search for their loved ones. The families, in particular, suffer from the mental anguish of not knowing whether their loved ones are still alive and, if so, where they are being held and under what conditions.”

Southern Tagalog groups commemorated this day through a lantern lighting before the Oblation Park of the University of the Philippines (UP)-Los Banos. The lighted lanterns contained different calls for the return of the desaparecidos. Earlier, UPLB students held a Black Friday Protest.

In UP-Diliman, the movie “Alipato at Muog” was screened at the UP Film Center depicting the search of the mother and brother for the missing Jonas Burgos. The audience gathered outside the hall after the film to call for justice and the surfacing of all the missing.

In Cebu, friends and parishioners offered flowers in memory of Fr. Romy Romano, a Redemptorist Church priest who was abducted and disappeared on July 11, 1985. A day prior, Karapatan-Central Visayas held a protest to call for justice for Elena Tijamo who was abducted on June 13, 2020, hidden and surfaced dead on August 29, 2021. The group condemned the Commission on Human Rights Regional Office 7 for its investigation’s report which concluded that state agents did not violate any human rights in the abduction and hiding of Tijamo.