Philippines-Canada Task Force on Human Rights
Statement

WHERE ARE LUISA POSA AND NILO ARADO?
WHERE ARE OUR MISSING IN THE PHILIPPINES?

May 10, 2007

As a cross-Canada network of Canadian and Filipino-Canadian individuals and organizations, we are deeply concerned about the continuing disappearance of LUISA POSA DOMINADO and NILO ARADO who were abducted on April 12, 2007 in the Philippines.  Posa-Dominado is a member of SELDA-Panay, the organization of former political prisoners in Panay Island, and Arado is the chair of the Panay chapter of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN, New Patriotic Alliance).

Reports state that Posa-Dominado and Arado were on their way to Iloilo City from Antique, together with Jose Ely Garachico, human rights worker of Karapatan-Panay when their vehicle was overtaken by two vans.  Armed men shot Garachico, the driver of the vehicle, and threw him out on the street. Witnesses saw the armed gunmen leave with Posa-Dominado and Arado in separate vans.  Witnesses brought Garachico to the Iloilo Doctors Hospital where he remains in critical condition.  Posa-Dominado and Arado remain missing.

Posa-Dominado and Arado are two of the latest victims of forced abductions by the Philippine military, police and their agents.  Since 2001 when Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power, close to 200 people have fallen victim to the Arroyo regime’s intensified use of abductions and enforced disappearances according to KARAPATAN (the leading alliance of human rights organizations in the Philippines).  These victims include Jonas Burgos, son of the late Filipino journalist and newspaper man Jose Burgos, who was abducted on April 28, 2007, just days before World Press Freedom Day.

Victims of abductions and enforced disappearances are leaders and members of people’s organizations, progressive partylist groups and ordinary peasants and workers.  Victims also include consultants and members of the peace negotiating panel of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), like Abner Hizarsa and Leo Velasco, whose security and protection should have been guaranteed under the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) entered into between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the NDFP.

The pattern of state terror and repression employed by the US-Arroyo regime is insidious: Victims are abducted, interrogated and tortured by military and police forces and agents who use government vehicles and hide their victims in military camps, headquarters and government offices.  There is good reason to believe that some may have been killed and their bodies hidden.  Or that some of them are indefinitely and secretly detained or held incommunicado in secret prisons, hospitals or military camps.  There are testimonies from victims lucky to have been “surfaced” either in prison, or sent home after being coerced into becoming military assets.

We strongly condemn the US-Arroyo regime for its brutal attacks on the Filipino people.  Enforced disappearances, just like extra-judicial killings, are state-sanctioned measures against legitimate people’s organizations and against ordinary people designed to sow terror and to punish critical and legitimate dissent. The use of enforced disappearances is a systematic and brutal form of repression against the people, which hides the evidence, whether alive or dead, while the perpetrators go free. The use of enforced disappearances is not only part of the regime’s desperate attempt to prolong its repressive and exploitative rule in the Philippines; it is also the regime’s attempt  to crush the national democratic revolution being waged by the people.

To date, the US-Arroyo regime has killed more than 830 leaders and members of progressive and militant organizations and enforcedly disappeared more than 200 while 357 have survived assassination attempts by elements of the regime's military and police.  With the implementation of the US-sponsored Oplan Bantay-Laya Part II (Operation Freedom Watch patterned after US Operation Phoenix in Vietnam), a further intensification of the killings is imminent.

As Filipinos and Canadians here in Canada, we call on the Arroyo government and the military to surface Posa-Dominado and Arado and the other men and women who are still missing.  We demand that the government and the military open all military camps, detachments and safe houses to searches by the families of the disappeared.  We remind the Arroyo government that enforced disappearances, torture and extra-judicial killings are violations of its own Constitution, which guarantees human rights to its citizens, as well as violations of international covenants on human rights and articles of war to which the Philippine government is a signatory, including that of the GRP-NDF Comprehensive Agreement on Respect of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law.

We hold on to the hope that the missing are still alive.  Public pressure can help.
•    Please send a letter to Ambassador Jose S. Brillantes, The Philippine Embassy in Canada, Suite 606, 130 Albert Street, Ottawa ON, K1P 5G4 or call (613) 233-1121 and leave a message expressing your concerns.
•    Write to Hon. Peter McKay, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ottawa, Ontario K1A OA6 and ask why Canada continues to send foreign aid to the repressive Arroyo government.
•    Write to your local MP and ask why Canada continues to send foreign aid to the repressive Arroyo government.

10 May 2007
Philippines-Canada Task Force on Human Rights
Statement