Solidarity groups from Europe remember the disappearance of James Balao five years ago. They join the Balao family, James’ friends and colleagues, in calling on Philippine government officials to let him go home, and in calling for a stop to all enforced disappearances.

Please see below statement, photos, video report and poem from Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Today, the 17th of September 2013, we count the 2128th day of his disappearance. James was an indigenous activist of the people — and environment movement in North-Luzon, Philippines and one of the founder of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA). He was captured by security of the police an military power in La Trinidad, Benguet.

The Monday demonstration in Stuttgart counts the days of his disappearance and demands from the government of the Philippines to stop at once all violations against the human rights, specially the killings and disappearances.

We want to know, what happened to him and we demand urgently: Stop impunity!

His friends, his family and the international community will go on with our demands until we know the complete truth. On the other side the government of Germany talks a lot about human rights and interferes in the sovereignty of states, but they support the government of Aquino III or former president G.M. Arroyo… what a shame and what a lie.

We will keep the fallen always in mind

Monday-demonstration in Stuttgart, Germany

Photos from Stuttgart, Germany:

James Balao is with us
What they did with you?
Where are you?
5 years are gone
since you was enforced captured
by the secret services.
Your family and we do not know
anything about your disappearance.
But we want to hear the truth,
Mr. President!

You lead a war against the people
with all means of betray
and terror with the only purpose
to upheld the power to exploit
the nature and the people
for enriching yourselves and the riches.

The history of the Philippines,
of the workers, peasants and oppressed
is the history of the class-struggleeverywhere.

Spartacus was crucified,
Jerg Ratgeb, a famous painter in Germany
was killed in the “War of the Peasants” 1525
by dividing his body by four horses.

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht
were cowardly murdered as well.

Thousands of freedom fighters were killed by the fascism,
unknown fighters, women and men,
barbarous and inhuman.
Thats the reality up to now.
We can’t understand,
but we have to.

The footprints of blood all through the history
will only then end, if we can live
in a liberated society of mankind
and nature
— free of the system of profit
— there is not much time left!

Today, at the 2128th of your disappearance,
your cry for freedom is not forgotten.
Your banner is uphold in the fights
in Rojava, Egypt, Columbia and in Chile,
where Viktor Jara was liquidated by 44 shots
40 years ago on the 9/11 1973
before they demolished his hands
to prevent him from singing with his guitar.

But his songs accompanies our march for freedom
and dignity and encourages us.
The fallen are with us
and we change our sadness into power.

You know that!

Statement by the Nederlands-Filippijnse Solidariteitsbeweging

na vijf jaar is james balao nog niet terecht

Het is vandaag precies vijf jaar geleden dat mensenrechtenactivist James Balao ontvoerd werd vlakbij een schooltje in Benguet, op het eiland Luzon in de Filippijnen. Volgens verschillende bronnen zit de overheid achter zijn verdwijning.

James Balao is medeoprichter van de organisatie ‘Cordillera Peoples Alliance’, die opkomt voor de rechten van inheemse volkeren. Voor zijn ontvoering schreef James in een email aan zijn familie hoe hij sinds juni 2008 gevolgd werd.

Familie en vrienden blijven geloven dat hij nog leeft, en blijven zoeken. De reportage van Roel Nollet over James uit 2009 werd genomineerd voor de Concentra Award.

Zie voor de reportage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NA8E5f2uSc

17 September 2008. Tomay, near Camp Dangwa … the usual morning routine of mothers and their children walking to the elementary school, early bread delivery truck parks in front of Saymore’s store. The quiet day was disturbed when the people witnessed the terrible abduction of James. Five men showed their inhumane cruelty to him — a kind and quite soul of a man. These evil men sneered and threatened the people with their guns, locked his jaw and shoved him in a white SUV.  All he could say was, “ask these men, what have I done wrong.”

Dear everyone,

James was lost to us on this day.  Maybe you remember. Yes, he is the same person still missing.  James Balao, our brother — the same person abducted by the military and the same man we, his family and closest friends, seek to this day. Five long years of worry, unsettling emotions and feelings, anger and anguish, frustration, being threatened ourselves for trying to find him… name it…we have gone through it.

Five long years passed, to those who have him, please, have a heart and let him come back home to us. If you killed him, like what our late father said, give us back his bones so that we can give him a proper burial

James was abducted under President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her brutal internal security policy Oplan Bantay Laya.  She was heartless.  Hundreds went missing like James and more than a thousand people were killed and tortured.  Enemies of the State  subjected to the terror of the policy are teachers, doctors, nurses, journalists, educators, agriculturists, social workers, even students, farmers, indigenous peoples – honorable men and women who have the will to serve their fellow men.  These are the people who tirelessly help the people safeguard their land and rights.

It is painful to see that this violation continues to this day with no desaparecido reunited with his or her family and that to this day, the present President allows enforced disappearances under his Operation Plan Bayanihan.

Together with our family, the Cordillera Peoples Alliance, Cordillera Human Rights Alliance, Desaparecidos, various local and international groups, we continue our search for James Balao and the campaign to end enforced disappearances.

We want our brother back home. We need him and we miss him. His friends need him too and so do the people whom he had served.

We will not stop until we find him.

For justice and freedom,

Nonette Balao
Winston Balao
Joni Balao-Strugar

Cordillera Human Rights Alliance
17 September 2013

We continue to search for James Balao and for justice

James Balao, founding member of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance was abducted in Tomay, La Trinidad last September 17, 2008.  State security forces took him as he was trying to get home.  He remains a desaparecido up to this day.

His enforced disappearance was part of the implementation of the national internal security policy Oplan Bantay Laya (Freedomwatch) under then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s regime.  He is among the more than 200 men and women – parents, sons and daughters – taken away from their families and work, denied their rights, and denied the people knowledge and access on their welfare and whereabouts.  The reason for this is that they are critical of the government’s policies that contradict human rights and the people’s dignity. The unjust cost of their political dissent is the denial of their rights.

Before James was silenced by his abductors, James pleaded to the onlookers, “Saludsuden yo man dagitoy nu ania ti basol ko? (Please ask them what I have done wrong?).  James did nothing wrong but be with the people in the assertion of their human rights and dignity.  Nobody should be subjected to this grave violation and placed outside the protection of human rights and the law.

It has been five long painful years of searching for James.  Misinformation about his whereabouts to deliberately derail the search has compounded the level of anxiety from not knowing where he is and in what state he is.  His parents both died in 2010 without seeing him.  His family and colleagues have been subjected to surveillance, threats and harassments in the search for him.

Inspite of the difficulties, the persistence of the Balao family, his friends, colleagues and human rights groups and the support from various local, national and international groups has been unwavering.  It is a source of strength.

The task remains.  The search must continue.

Last April, Judge Jennifer Humiding of the Benguet Regional Trial Court Branch 63 issued a report to the Supreme Court regarding the investigation of the case of James Balao. The report is part of the continuing case regarding the Petition for the Writ of Amparo for James filed in 2008. Judge Humiding recommended for the following:

1. “The incumbent chief of staff of the AFP and the director general of the Philippine National Police to directly and personally monitor the efforts of the SITFG-Balao until its conclusion.”
2. The conduct of parallel investigation by the National Bureau of Investigation and the Commission on Human Rights.  These parallel investigations are expected to provide a system of check and balance to the investigation being conducted by the AFP and PNP.
3. “All the concerned officers and authorities shall make available all documents they have on JAMES BALAO and make accessible all the officers who had anything to do with the abduction, or who had knowledge of the abduction; as well as to be granted access to camps and safehouses that could give leads to the whereabouts of JAMES BALAO.”
4. Regular reports regarding the investigation should be submitted to the Supreme Court.

This report comes from findings that not enough was done by the State to locate James – a clear portrayal of impunity in this country.

We vow to persist in the campaign and the search.  If he is alive, we hope that he will receive news that we continue the search for him.  This will provide him strength and hope wherever he is being kept or detained.  If he is not, his family has every right to have him and to closure.  Only our collective efforts will lead us to him and to justice.

SURFACE JAMES BALAO!
STOP ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES!

For reference:

Atty. Jennifer Asuncion
Vice Chairperson
Mobile number:  09175553118

Jude Baggo
Secretary General
Mobile number: 09189199007

email: chra.karapatan@gmail.com

cordillera human rights alliance
55 ferguson road,baguio city, philippines
telefax: +63. 74. 443. 7159
telephone:  +63 74 304 4239
cp:  +63 918 919 9007

By KARAPATAN

Karapatan today held a picket in front of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court to press for the immediate release of political prisoner Eduardo Serrano, a consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) to the peace negotiations with the government of the Republic of the Philippines (GPH). Serrano’s counsel, led by the Public Interest Law Center (PILC), presented a witness on the kidnapping case against Serrano.

Karapatan chairperson Marie Hilao-Enriquez said there are 12 other detained peace consultants in various detention facilities in the country.

“Most of them would have been released had the GPH kept its commitment. But, we know the Aquino government lives by PR stints, so what do you expect? The GPH recently arrested another consultant, JASIG-holder Ma. Loida Magpatoc who is now incarcerated at Camp Bagong Diwa, bringing the total number of women political prisoners to 34.”

Serrano, a JASIG-protected person, has been in jail for almost 10 years now. He was  abducted by elements of the intelligence service of the Philippine Army on 2 May 2004, when he alighted from a public bus in Lipa City, a violation of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) signed by the GPH and the NDFP.  Serrano, currently detained at the Philippine National Police Custodial Center in Camp Crame, faces charges of multiple murder and kidnapping, common crimes that effectively hide the political nature of his case from the public.

Resumption of the peace talks

On 10 September, Serrano and two other NDFP peace consultants detained at Camp Crame, Eduardo Sarmiento and Renante Gamara, issued a statement to add their voice to the call of various peace groups and advocates for the GPH and the NDFP to resume the peace talks. The GPH, through its peace panel head Atty. Alex Padilla, unilaterally terminated the peace talks in May of this year.

“At this juncture in our history wherein hundreds of thousands of the Filipino people are rising up in outrage against the pork barrel scam and other forms of corruption in the government, the call for a just and lasting peace through a negotiated political settlement is undeniably needed and a must,” said the statement signed by Serrano, Sarmiento, and Gamara.

The consultants underscored the importance of the resumption of the peace talks as the next substantive agenda, the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER), would tackle the root causes of the armed conflict.

Hilao-Enriquez, also an independent observer in the GPH-NDFP peace negotiations said, “the pork barrel scam highlights the need for the peace talks to resume and tackle the problem of bureaucrat capitalism — how the few government bureaucrats use the entire government machinery to rob the entire nation and further enrich themselves.  It is appalling that these bureaucrats in the government rob the people, in the guise of serving the people; the same people that they terrorize, arrest, detain, and kill.”

Political detainees against pork

Meanwhile, political detainees all over the country are now preparing to conduct various forms of protest actions against the pork barrel system and to show their solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of Filipino people who demand: “abolish the pork barrel system, punish the guilty in the pork scam, and rechannel the pork funds for the benefit of the people.”

The coordinated protest action is set on 19 September.

Reference:

Cristina “Tinay” Palabay
Secretary General
+63917-3162831

Angge Santos
Media Liaison
+63918-9790580

———————————————————————
PUBLIC INFORMATION DESK
publicinfo@karapatan.org
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Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights

2nd Flr. Erythrina Bldg., #1 Maaralin corner Matatag Sts., Central District

Diliman, Quezon City, PHILIPPINES 1101

Telefax: (+63 2) 4354146

Web: http://www.karapatan.org

KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties.  It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign.