Erlinda Cadapan and Concepcion Empeno with pictures of their missing daughters, Sherlyn and Karen. (file)
Friday, June 26, is International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.
It is also the day, nine years ago, when University of the Philippines students Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan, along with farmer Manuel Merino, were abducted from a farmhouse in Hagonoy, Bulacan by soldiers.
Relatives of the two students and of other victims of enforced disappearances and of political prisoners, human rights activists and members of the University of the Philippines community will gather at the lobby of the state university’s Palma Hall at 5:30 p.m. Friday to honor Empeño and Cadapan and, once again, call for them to be surfaced.
The courts have acknowledged the military’s involvement in their disappearance, putting on trial retired Army general Jovito Palparan, dubbed “The Butcher” by activists who blame him for extrajudicial killings, disappearances and other rights abuses in the areas where he served as military commander, Lieutenant Colonel Felipe Anotado and Master Sergeant Edgardo Osorio on charges of kidnapping with serious illegal detention.
Palparan has denied his involvement in the disappearance of the UP students and Merino, who he described as “full-time” members of the New People’s Army, as well as other abuses blamed on him, although he has acknowledged that he may have “encouraged” others into taking the law into their own hands in their pursuit of so-called “enemies of the state.”
Despite his high profile, Palparan, a former party-list congressman, managed to evade arrest for almost three years until the National Bureau of Investigation finally cornered him in a house in Manila’s Sta. Mesa district in August last year.
In February this year, prosecution eyewitness Raymond Manalo, a farmer from Bulacan, told the court regional trial court in Malolos, that he saw Empeño and Cadapan naked and being tortured in a military camp where he and his brother Reynaldo were also being held.
The Manalo brothers were also snatched by soldiers, also in 2006, but eventually escaped.
Raymond Manalo also said he met Palparan three times while he was in military hands.
In a statement Friday, Hustisya (Victims United for Justice) said the commemoration of Empeño-Cadapan abduction is “a call to unite and call for justice, and a stop to political repression.”
“We want justice and want it now!” the organization said.
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/113117/9-years-ago-today--kin-friends-activists-remember-abduction-of-up-students-empeno-cadapan
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