The case of Jonas Burgos

Roughly twelve years ago, Farmers-activist Jonas Burgos from the Philippines was eating at a restaurant when military men entered and took him. He has never been seen since, leaving his mother and the rest of his family without a clue as to what exactly happened to him. Even now the search still goes on but without result; and Jonas is not the only person to go missing.

The Philippines has a history of people vanishing. It’s called enforced disappearances. In the last 60 years, almost 2000 people have been documented as missing. They are being taken by state agents, but the reported number of disappearances is much higher than documented, 2334 to be exact. Most victims are political activists, farmers, members of labour unions, and students. Since 2012 enforced disappearances are punishable by life imprisonment according the Anti-Enforced/Involuntary Disappearance Act.

Jonas is not the only person who has gone missing; but because of his mother, Edita Burgos, he is now a ‘poster boy’ of the disappeared. After his abduction, she founded an organization called Free Jonas Burgos, to not only fight against Enforced disappearances but all violations of the human right. Even now, twelve years later, Edita has not given up the hope to find her son. She blames impunity for the human right violations within the Philippines. She takes the case of her son as an example: “We started off filing a case. First it was a missing person report. The two police men who were supposed to investigate died a few weeks later under suspicious circumstances.”

The other incident was that the license plate of the car that her son was pushed into was recorded. The plate was traced to a camp in the outside of Metro Manila. Edita filed another case to bring the people who kidnapped her son into justice. She had something that is called the writ of Amparo, meaning all information should be available for the case and everyone should cooperate into solving it but this did not happen accordingly. It took Edita six years before she was able to win over the judges. The court admitted that Jonas was taken by elements of the Philippian army. Two people were identified and other names of generals were mentioned but those generals were cleared from prosecution.

Edita explains that not only the perpetrators of these violations are tolerated, they are also encouraged by the president. “Enforced disappearing is still continuing because of the atmosphere of impunity. We were able to record a military document in the case of my son. We found out that those involved even got rewarded for their actions. They’ve had promotions and were given scholarships which contributes to the culture of impunity. My son was taken during the administration of Arroyo. That is now twelve years ago and the same atmosphere continues. So from the beginning of the martial law up until now enforced disappearing, killings and other human rights violations still happen because those who are guilty do not get punished. The families of victims are even harassed. For this reason I founded the Free Jonas Burgos Movement. To be there for the victims. We are not a legal entity, just a small group of advocates not only fighting against enforced disappearances but human right violations in general.”