Families of 2 missing UP students air appeal
July 11, 2006
Families of 2 missing UP students air appeal
Inquirer
Published on page A1 of the July 11, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
A GLEEFUL Karen Empeño, who is turning 23 on July 22, excitedly told her mother by phone she would take time off from her hectic schedule at school and travel home to Masinloc, Zambales, so they could celebrate their birthdays together.
Sherlyn Cadapan, in a text to her mother who was growing mushrooms in Los Baños, Laguna, broke the good news that she was pregnant.
Everything about them seemed cheerful and rosy until news came that the two activist students of the University of the Philippines disappeared supposedly while doing research on farmers in Bulacan province.
Based on news reports, Empeño, 22, and Cadapan, 29, were roused at around 2 a.m. on June 26 at their rented home in Hagonoy town in Bulacan by loud pounding on the door, and were seized by armed men wearing bonnets once they stepped out.
A male companion, Manuel Merino, was reported to have been snatched along with the two women.
The militant League of Filipino Students (LFS), which claims Empeño as a member, blamed Army soldiers for the predawn abduction, an allegation denied by the military.
Plea to abductors
After days of futile search, their distraught mothers yesterday showed up at the office of Senator Manuel “Mar” Roxas II at the Senate to seek his help and issued a similar plea to the abductors: Release them.
“If my daughter has committed a crime, they should bring her out. Let her go through the process. They can file charges against her,” the bespectacled, soft-spoken Erlinda Cadapan, 57, told reporters.
“What’s important to me is that I know where she is. Her life is precious to me,” she added, her voice trailing off.
Concepcion Empeño, 56, school head of the Tapuac Elementary School in Masinloc, could only nod in agreement.
Her son and Karen’s brother, Oscar, 31, spoke on her behalf: “Our only desire is to see her. If they’re linking her to the underground movement, why don’t they file charges? Why don’t they bring her out?”
Worrisome
Roxas conceded that the abduction was “worrisome” and assured the families his office would coordinate with the Commission on Human Rights, other government agencies and the military to look into their case.
“The issue here is whether the security agencies of the government are involved in these abductions. We were witness to these a few months ago when an agency of the government picked up five individuals and brought them to a safe house, instead of the prosecutor’s office,” he said.
Roxas was referring to the case of five supporters of former President Joseph Estrada who were picked up and allegedly tortured by military agents in late May.
“We don’t want to make a general statement without any basis, but that is the environment that these disappearances are happening in. That’s why we’ll help them,” he said.
Senate probe
The senator indicated that it was too early to say whether he would call for an investigation of the abduction of the two UP students.
“If the information will point to the direction that this is a security operation, then we will follow it up from there,” he said. “We don’t want to be precipitate in our conclusion, and we will follow it to where the information will lead us.”
The abduction, hardly reported in the media, came on the heels of killings of leftist activists, mostly members of the party-list group Bayan Muna, which the human rights watchdog Amnesty International said were creating a “climate of fear and impunity.”
So far, 237 activists had been killed since January 2001, when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took over the country’s top post from Estrada.
Sociology student
Empeño, the third of five children, is a senior BA Sociology student at the UP College of Social Sciences.
When she was abducted, she was doing research on the plight of farmers in Bulacan for her thesis, the only remaining requirement she had to fulfill before she could graduate, according to her family.
Cadapan, the second of five children, is an award-winning triathlete from the UP College of Human Kinetics, also in her senior year. She only had three more subjects to complete before she could graduate.
Church wedding
Cadapan married her longtime boyfriend in civil rites a few months ago and was preparing for the Church wedding in September, her family said.
She was a community organizer for the militant group Anakbayan and volunteer researcher for farmers in Central Luzon, according to reports.
Based on bits of information they had gathered, the families of the two victims said that Army soldiers carried out the abduction. But the Army unit based in Hagonoy has denied this, Erlinda Cadapan said.
Oscar Empeño said his family was aware of the dangers that Karen faced in doing fieldwork as a sociology student, more so when they learned that she did volunteer work for the Alyansa ng Magbubukid ng Bulacan.
“In a way, we expected this to happen. Because they could easily brand her NGO as leftist even though it’s a legal organization,” he said.
Erlinda Cadapan, for her part, said she was not aware of her daughter’s work as an activist.
The human rights group Karapatan said the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency and the military should be blamed for the 10 assassinations and 15 involuntary disappearances in the past three weeks.
Target research
“Under the (the intelligence community’s) Oplan Bantay Laya, civilians are subjected to so-called target research. Anyone arbitrarily tagged by these so-called intelligence agents as communists or communist sympathizers are then placed on an order of battle and killed,” said Jigs Clamor, Karapatan deputy secretary general.
Clamor said the killings and disappearances were happening nationwide, particularly in Eastern Visayas, Southern Tagalog, Central Luzon, Bicol and Southern Mindanao — areas identified by the military to be the hotbed of the communist insurgency.
The military has denied that it is behind the spate of killings.
Philippine National Police Director General Oscar Calderon vowed to reduce if not totally put a stop to the political killings.
Calderon also accepted the challenge of making the police ability to solve cases of extrajudicial killings as one of the criteria for judging his 15 months in office.
“I have committed the Philippine National Police in my (acceptance) speech that during my administration … we will really put a stop to these extrajudicial killings,” he said. With reports from Luige A. del Puerto and Norman Bordadora
