THE relatives of hundreds of missing Filipino activists, labor leaders and National Democratic Front (NDF) peace consultants have asked Pope Francis to help them find their loved ones and secure justice for those who have been murdered.
“Your Holiness, please intercede for us in seeking justice for our disappeared loved ones,” they wrote to Pope Francis during their gathering at Plaza Miranda in Manila on All Souls’ Day.
The grieving relatives, who all belong to the Desaparecidos, a group seeking those who disappeared from the martial-law regime until the current Aquino administration, lighted candles and offered flowers to remember the victims.
“It has been the practice of families and relatives of victims of enforced and involuntary disappearances to gather every November 2. Beyond remembering, we come together as a reminder that our loved ones have yet to be surfaced and the state’s policy of enforced disappearances be stopped,” Desaparecidos Secretary-General Aya Santos said.
Santos’s father, Leo Velasco, a peace consultant of the NDF, has been missing for the past seven years after he was abducted in Cagayan de Oro City by armed men riding standard military-type vehicles. Santos said the families of the Desaparecidos await the visit of Pope Francis to the Philippines in January 2015.
“We have followed and listened to the series of statements of Pope Francis on justice and human rights. For the families, his visit is an opportune time to voice out the injustice and human-rights violations committed in the Philippines,” she added.
“Our hope has been rekindled after the pontiff made clear his firm stand to defend human rights and seek social justice. We turn to the pope for support because, under the watch of President Aquino, human-rights violations have intensified without letup. We stand as testimonies to the gross situation of human rights here,” Santos said.
Santos said there have been 21 victims of abduction under President Aquino, thus raising the number of the Desaparecidos since the Marcos dictatorship.
Despite the passage of the Anti-forced Disappearance law, the crime of forced disappearance continues as a state policy under Internal Peace and Security Plan (IPSP) Bayanihan, Mr. Aquino’s counterinsurgency program, Santos claimed. She added that the IPSP had received funds from the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), which the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional.
“As DAP, it uses public funds to abduct, torture and disappear persons. It also uses funds to coddle the likes of butcher Jovito Palparan, who is a ‘free man’ at Fort Bonifacio,” Santos complained.
“We pray that the good pope will listen to our plea and stand at one with us in calling to stop forced disappearances in the Philippines. Dear Pope, please heed our call for justice. We cry out to surface all the disappeared, in the Philippines and other parts of the world, such as in Latin America and Argentina, the pope’s homeland,” Santos pleaded.