Who will be the next Jonas Burgos?
Monday this week marked the 100th day of the disappearance of Jonas Burgos, the most recent victim of a year-long wave of disappearances that the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings and the Arroyo-created Melo Commission have documented.Other troubled governments have recognized the limits of domestic remedies, and would be smart enough to know that the “desaparecido” [disappeared person] problem has crossed the continents since it emerged in Latin America in the 1970s. It is time we realized that Jonas, his brave mother Edita, and his family are not the only victims here. We are all stakeholders now, and there is a post-Nuremberg world out there ready and willing to help. We must enlist international help to stop the killings.
We have begun to exhaust our domestic remedies. Jonas’ family has sued before the courts for a writ of habeas corpus, and the military is poised, as expected, to deny that they ever had him in their custody, thus hoping to freeze the petition. But as I have written many times before, it is not enough for government merely to wash its hands. In the words of Otto Triffterer, a professor at the University of Salzburg and director of International Criminal Law, Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law: “Silent toleration may amount to conclusive and therefore active participation” because it has material effects simply “by the impression that it makes.” It is not some passive sin of omission for which government is held answerable only when there is a specific pre-established legal duty, in this case, to protect life.
A state prosecutor has been sacked by his boss, the secretary of justice, for investigating why the van into which Jonas was taken bore military plates. The Supreme Court is drafting new rules to expand the remedies available to grieving families and enable the courts to seek out the victims more actively, conduct quick searches in military camps and detention houses, and ensure that the soldiers manning the camp gates honor the courts’ orders.
But other governments have done much more and have voluntarily opened themselves to international inquiries. A similar move will boost public confidence in President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address condemning the unrelenting murders of leftwing activists. It will at least neutralize her open praise and adulation for Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan, the officer most closely linked to the killings, during last year’s State of the Nation Address.
By way of example, the United Nations has created a Special Tribunal to investigate the murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was killed in downtown Beirut by a car bomb with a charge equivalent to 1,800 kilograms of TNT. The attack was committed on Valentine’s Day 2005, and by March 29, the Lebanese government itself supported the UN Security Council’s decision to create an international independent commission “to assist the Lebanese authorities in their investigation of all aspects of this terrorist act.” No need to worry about the emotionally charged issue of sovereignty; the international commission worked “within the framework of Lebanese sovereignty and of its legal system.” Indeed, if we take this path, we take an intermediate step between a wholly internationalized arena unsettling for governments and a wholly domestic arena uncongenial to the victims.
There are distinct advantages in enlisting foreign assistance. To start with, perhaps it might actually produce concrete results. Remember that no Philippine court, not even the Philippine Human Rights Commission, has ever held Ferdinand Marcos or his estate responsible for any human rights violation from the time martial law was declared on Sept. 21, 1972 to his ouster during the February uprising in 1986. Indeed, the only courts that have dared to do so were those of Honolulu and of Seattle, and the larger award from Honolulu remains unenforced due to internal maneuverings before Philippine courts.
As a nation, we have had no closure on that dark chapter in our history. It continues to haunt present-day debates, and those with short memories openly seek the Filipino Lee Kuan Yew or Park Chung Hee. With regard to the “desaparecidos,” without an authoritative fact-finding, their bereaved families are denied one element essential to their claim of justice, namely, the right to know what happened to their loved ones.
Finally, the strongest endorsement comes from a speech delivered before the UN Security Council and voting for the investigative commission for the Beirut bombing. One diplomat stated: “We have also learned that justice is a powerful force for peace.” Political assassinations could lead to strife, conflict and war. “The creation of an investigative commission is a good and powerful message. It is a practical step towards ensuring international awareness and support for all efforts to see that justice is done.” The UN press quoted him as saying that “today, the Council not only cast a vote for peace and justice, but also struck a blow against those who used political assassination to sow fear and terror.”
That statement was made by Foreign Secretary Alberto G. Romulo at the 5,297th Meeting of the UN Security Council. Should it come to pass that the same body is called upon to take the same measures for Manila, we must remind the Philippine government of Romulo’s wise counsel, and get the Arroyo administration to welcome, if not invite, foreign assistance in vindicating the fundamental human liberties that it has failed, time and again, to protect.
