The 20th year of the disappearance of Karen and Sherlyn is not just about them or about their families. It is an indictment of our democracy. It is proof that butchers and human rights violators are being rewarded and that impunity persists.
On June 26, 2006, UP students Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan were abducted by soldiers under the command of then Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan Jr in Hagonoy, Bulacan. To this day, the two remain missing.
The families and friends of Karen and Sherlyn searched everywhere – military camps, hospitals, funeral homes, and every imaginable place in Bulacan, Central Luzon and Metro Manila. Their search led them to the courts. A witness, Raymond Manalo, testified before the Commission on Human Rights, the Court of Appeals, and the Bulacan trial court. Twelve years after the incident, in September 2018, Palparan was convicted of charges of serious illegal detention and kidnapping.
Entire communities in Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog and Eastern Visayas felt a sense of justice for the thousands of activists killed by Palparan’s men. The Butcher, as Palparan has been called, was the first military official to be punished for human rights abuses. Even if he was indicted for just a fraction of his crimes, it was still a bittersweet victory.
Just recently, lawyers of the victims’ families received information that Palparan has been transferred to the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) in Baguio City. Before this, Palparan was afforded special treatment in jail.
He has been without remorse. In fact, he has consistently justified his actions. Clearly, Palparan only implemented his commander-in-chief’s counterinsurgency policy. Then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo praised the Butcher in her 2006 State of the Nation Address, saying, “Jovito Palparan is fighting the enemy. He will not retreat until communities break free from the night of terror and give rise to the new dawn of justice and freedom.”
But Palparan was the one who sowed state terror known as Oplan Bantay Laya 1 and 2. Arroyo’s counterinsurgency policy resulted in 1,118 victims of extrajudicial killings and 204 victims of torture by the end of 2009, according to Karapatan. Concurring with Karapatan was former United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Prof. Philip Alston who also blamed Arroyo’s counterinsurgency program for the extrajudicial killings.
Twenty-years later, the same infrastructure of terror remains. The “order of battle” (or a list of names of activists drawn by the military during the reign of Palparan) is now the vicious red-tagging. Alston, in his final report, said that 94 percent of extrajudicial killing victims with known affiliations belonged to groups maligned in this so-called order of battle.
Today, there are more Palparans, still emboldened by the President and the National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). Sixteen more Karens and Sherlyns have been forcibly disappeared under the Marcos Jr. administration.
The 20th year of the disappearance of Karen and Sherlyn is not just about them or about their families. It is an indictment of our democracy. It is proof that butchers and human rights violators are being rewarded and that impunity persists.
Still, in this benighted land, our only hope lies in the resistance and collective struggle of ordinary people like the families of the disappeared and all the human rights defenders who have journeyed and fought with them. (DAA)
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