Lagman slams gov’t decision to seek purging of disappearance cases

By Ben Rosario

Opposition Rep. Edcel Lagman Saturday slammed government’s decision to ask a United Nations body to purge 625 cases from its record of involuntary disappearance in the Philippines.

Albay 1st District Rep. Edcel Lagman (FEDERICO CRUZ / MANILA BULLETIN FILE PHOTO)

Lagman said the move made by the Philippine delegation during a meeting with the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearance working group in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“The wholesale delisting of enforced disappearance cases is sweeping under the rug the ultimate truth about the victims’ fate and ensures their violator’s impunity,” said Lagman in a press statement.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said the Philippine delegation to the meeting moved to delist more than 600 cases of enforced and involuntary disappearances that occurred from 1975 to 2012.

Brig. Gen. Antonio Parlade, Armed Forces of the Philippines deputy chief of staff for operations, noted that many of the recorded cases took place during the internal purging made by leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army..

“It is a double atrocity for a victim to be involuntarily disappeared and his case, while pending solution, is delisted,” stressed Lagman, honorary chairman of the Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearance (FIND).

“This sinister initiative of the Presidential Human Rights Committee under the Office of the President does not disclose to the public the victims and perpetrators involved in the cases sought to be delisted,” Lagman said.

According to him the move to purge the involuntary disappearance records was made without prior knowledge of the Commission on Human Rights, other concerned human rights groups and relatives of the victims.

“The length of the disappearance is not a reason for the delisting because the act constituting enforced disappearance is a continuing offense and does not prescribe pursuant to R.A. No. 10353 or the “Anti-Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance Act of 2012″, the first statute of its kind in Asia,” said Lagman.

The veteran opposition solon stressed that the payment of compensation to victims does not foreclose investigation, prosecution and conviction of culprits because the exemption or pardon of the violators is not addressed under R.A. No. 10368 or the “Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013″.