The Philippine Online Chronicles

Roxas, a 32-year old volunteer health worker, surfaced on May 25 after having been abducted on May 19 in Sitio Bagong Sikat, Barangay Kapanikian, La Paz, Tarlac together with her two companions, Jun Carabeo and John Edward Jandoc. Carabeo surfaced a day after Roxas's release but Handoc remains missing. Human rights organizations such as Karapatan maintains that they were seized by state security forces.

An American citizen of Filipino descent is a member of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan)-USA and cultural group Habi Arts based in Los Angeles, California. Bayan USA, is an alliance of 14 Filipino social justice organizations across the United States.

Karapatan and the police station of La Paz, Tarlac reported that Roxas and her companions were taken by at least eight fully-armed, bonnet-clad men on board two motorcycles and a van without any plate numbers, according to Inquirer.net.

Ordeal

Since her release, Roxas has been granted writ of amparo by the Supreme Court. She has also flown back to the United States but says she expects to return to the Philippines soon.

In her statement, she recounts her experience at the hands of her abductors: “They held my feet and my hands down and doubled-up plastic bags were pulled down on my head and face and closed on my neck and I started to suffocate and I could not breathe anymore and I was seeing white and thinking I was going to die.”

Militant groups said that Roxas is the first case of a Fil-Am activist abducted by suspected military forces. The incident caused a row within the Fil-Am community in the United States, prompting a US congressman to make a statement condemning it.

Bulatlat.com quoted Roxas’s fellow Fil-Am activist, Bernadette Ellorin, who said that Melissa’s decision to stay for good here in the country “was set amidst an acute human-rights crisis in the Philippines that includes reports of rampant extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, illegal arrest, torture, and summary executions.”

“A culture of impunity”

Militant groups further denounced efforts by the Presidential Human Rights Commission (PHRC) to deny the facts about the kidnapping.

In a statement on the organization's website, Bayan-USA secretary general Rhonda Ramiro says, “As officially reported by United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston in his 2007 country report, the pattern of rampant extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances remains due to a culture of impunity, which includes non-efforts by the Philippine authorities to conduct investigations and prosecute the perpetrators of human rights violations, despite confirmation and documentation of such cases.”

According to human rights advocates, more than 200 Filipinos have been victims of enforced disappearances since 2001 when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took power. Various investigations, most notably by the United Nations Human Rights Council, have pointed to the military as the main culprit in these cases.

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