What began as a day filled with fun and festivities quickly turned into tragedy, when James Jazmines, 63, failed to return home after attending his friend Felix Salaveria Jr.’s 67th birthday on August 23 in Tabaco City, Albay. Five days after Jazmines’s enforced disappearance, Salaveria suffered the same fate.

Jazmines and Salaveria are the third and fourth activists abducted in the country this year, in addition to the two new cases on September 11, where peasant organizers Andy Magno and Vladimir Maro were reportedly abducted in San Pablo, Isabela. 

This brings the number of active forced disappearance cases under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. up to 17.

A Vicious Cycle

Jazmines and Salaveria’s friendship is one fostered by cycling, but now their friends and families worry that they won’t be able to bike together again.

Jazmines is the youngest brother of National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) consultant Alan Jazmines. But the former is no stranger to activism either, starting as an information officer of the League of Filipino Students in the late 70s, then assuming the same position in Kilusang Mayo Uno’s (KMU) labor center from the 80s to the mid-2000s.

Meanwhile, Salaveria is known as an avid eco-waste management advocate in Tabaco City. He also has a soft spot for the indigenous community, as a founding member of two indigenous people’s rights groups. This advocacy eventually translated to him joining the staff of the Ethnic Studies and Development Center’s Minority Rights Advocacy Program.

“Our father is loved and respected in the community of Barangay Cobo, Tabaco. He is … known for his kindness and generosity, supporting those in need and working on a community garden for his neighborhood,” Felicia Ferrer, his daughter, said in a press release.

Both of them also suffer from medical ailments. Jazmines is hypertensive with chronic leg pain due to a nerve implant in his spine, while Salaveria is still recovering from a stroke in 2023 that paralyzed the left part of his body.

State agents are believed to be the culprits of their disappearance. 

Human rights group Karapatan reported that Salaveria received information that a group of men forced Jazmines into a white van that had been parked two hours prior at the street corner where his house is located. After the abduction, a man on a motorcycle trailing the van was seen carrying Jazmines’s bike.

Upon discovering this, Salaveria quickly reported Jazmines’s disappearance to the Karapatan National Office. But five days later, a group of men were caught on CCTV shoving him inside a van, just before he reached his house after buying food. The abduction happened in broad daylight, 10 a.m., with some neighbors witnessing the crime.

Witnesses near his house also noted that a group of uniformed policemen entered Salaveria’s house, nine hours after the abduction, to get his cellphone, laptop, and personal belongings.

“We fear that James and Felix may never be surfaced and end up as the 14th and 15th in a steadily growing list of victims of enforced disappearance under the Marcos Jr. regime,“ Karapatan said in their statement.

Last Wednesday, 19 days after the disappearance of Salaveria, a search was commenced in Legazpi City, headed by Jazmines and Salaveria’s lawyer, Tony La Viña, and his team.

“It will be an intense next few days, like looking for needles in a haystack. But others have gone through this before and we are applying lessons from those abductions,” La Viña added in a Facebook post.

Outright Deception

Before Jazmines and Salaveria’s abduction, there were already the disappearances of a veteran labor organizer and a young environmental and indigenous rights defender.

William Lariosa, a labor organizer of KMU in Southern Mindanao, was last seen in Quezon, Bukidnon on April 10 before he was allegedly abducted by elements of the 48th Infantry Battalion.

Five months in, his wife, Rosiele Lariosa, traveled to Manila for a press conference about her missing husband. She recounted how their family has been a consistent target of harassment by the military since 2022, as soldiers cloaked in civilian clothing often tried convincing her to coerce Lariosa into surrendering.

The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights revealed in a statement that Lariosa’s abduction coincided with a military operation against the New People’s Army, cementing the government’s faulty linking of activism with support to rebel groups.

“We would like to remind the government that union organizing is not a crime and workers are the backbone of any economic recovery. Organizing is a basic human right and element of a functioning democracy,” the organization said.

Despite extensive searches, his family still cannot find him. What they received instead is persistent harassment from the state, now targeting the homes of other KMU regional labor leaders and women’s rights advocates.

This led to his family filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which was rejected twice: first at the Regional Trial Court in Malaybalay City, and then at the Court of Appeals. Now, the case has been appealed to the Supreme Court, where it remains pending.

A writ of habeas corpus demands the surfacing of a detainee to the court and justify their detention. This also allows the prisoner to challenge the legality of their confinement.

Meanwhile in Lucena City, Quezon, what was supposedly a win for human rights turned into a deceitful disappearance, as a political prisoner who was reported to have been freed still hasn’t been found.

Rowena Dasig's legal team was surprised to find out that she had already been released on August 22, despite the lack of notice from the Lucena City District Jail.

When paralegals confronted the district jail about Dasig’s hushed release, authorities said that her relatives had already received her. But Dasig’s own family did not know she was even released either.

Dasig, together with co-environmental defender Miguela Peniero, was arrested with trumped-up charges last July 12, 2023, for investigating the effects of a power plant being built in Atimonan, Quezon on the farmers near the area. They were both charged with illegal possession of firearms and explosives, which is a non-bailable offense.

During her incarceration, the district jail was very strict with visitors—even her paralegals who were authorized to work on her case were barred from visiting her. One paralegal divulged in an interview with the Collegian that working on Dasig’s case was especially hard because of the Lucena jail’s unreasonable strictness and hostility toward them.

This rancor toward those who wanted to help Dasig materialized when the 85th Infantry Battalion pressed terrorism financing charges against two of her paralegals. These accusations were quickly dismissed due to a lack of evidence.

Dasig’s lawyers described her release as unjust and unlawful in a statement, as the activist was already acquitted of her charges and was set for release when this happened. Her lawyers argued that the district jail’s delaying of her release, refusal to comply with the court order, and rejection of her release should be grounds for penalization.

No Accountability

Though it is stipulated in legislation through Republic Act 10353 or the Anti-Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance Act of 2012 that perpetrators of enforced disappearances must be penalized, none so far has been held accountable for the recent abductions.

This act should ideally make any informant, who is not an accomplice, relay into writing the circumstances and whereabouts of the victim, while courts must also expedite the issuance of the writs of habeas corpus, amparo, and habeas data. Direct perpetrators of the offense and the officials who allowed it, will receive a penalty of reclusion perpetua.

Furthermore, government officials who are found to be perpetrators or participants in any manner, will be preventively suspended or summarily dismissed, depending on the strength of evidence against them.

“Section 8 of the said Act requires government security agencies to issue certifications regarding the whereabouts or absence of a missing person. However, the law has miserably failed to prevent disappearances and to ensure the resurfacing of the victims,” Mary Aileen Diez-Bacalso, human rights network FORUM-ASIA, said.

But even if a desaparecido resurfaces, they often survive with irreparable damages. 

This was the case with activists Jonila Castro and Jhed Tamano, who suffered physical and mental torture, transferring from safehouses to military camps while they were abducted. Activists Eco Dangla and Jak Tiong, meanwhile, surfaced bruised and traumatized after three days of physical and psychological torture.

Ideally, under section 26 of the act, desaparecidos will receive monetary compensation, rehabilitation, and restitution of honor and reputation. Instead, those who have exposed their experiences, received defamation cases.

These attacks on human rights are exacerbated by Marcos’s “whole of nation approach,” which Karapatan describes as a counterinsurgency program patterned after US models that aims to mobilize the resources of the entire state to “demonize activists and political dissenters.”

This can be seen through the 15 current desaparecidos and the over 1.6 million victims who have been threatened, harassed, and intimidated under the term of Marcos, based on Karapatan’s 2023 year-end report.

An analysis of the demographic of desaparecidos in his term reveals targeting across multiple sectors: two women activists, a fisherfolk organizer, two farmers, four peasant organizers, two indigenous rights advocates, a staff of the NDFP, two habal-habal drivers, an environmental defender and political prisoner, a labor organizer, and a waste advocate.

Marcos shows no signs of willingness to address these enforced disappearances: In his latest State of the Nation Address, he remained mum on issues regarding human rights, just as he was in his first and second year speeches.

“[Failure in enforcing the Anti-Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance Act] exacerbates the Philippines’ culture of impunity and injustice, where human rights violators are essentially shielded from scrutiny and accountability,” Diez-Bacalso said. ●