ILOILO City – It was the International Day of the Disappeared seven days ago, August 30.
The disappeared or desaparecidos are individuals abducted, presumably by state agents, who then vanish without a trace.
Western Visayas has seen several cases of enforced disappearance through the years, and among the most notable involved activists Maria Luisa Posa-Dominado and Nilo Arado.
The pair was abducted by armed individuals on the night of April 12, 2007 in Barangay Cabanbanan, Oton, Iloilo while returning home from Antique.
Dominado served as the spokesperson for Panay Island’s Samahan ng mga Ex-detainee Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto (Selda) while Arado was the chairperson of Paghugpong sang mga Mangunguma sa Panay kag Guimaras (Pamanggas).
Seventeen years post-abduction, their families persist in seeking justice while holding onto hope of seeing their loved ones alive again.
May Wan Posa Dominado of Arevalo district here, Maria Luisa’s eldest daughter, still clings to the hope of seeing her mother alive.
“Our hope endures, never fading. It fuels our strength and drives other families of the disappeared to seek justice and continue the search, regardless of how many years have passed,” May Wan told Panay News.
Jose Ely “Leeboy” Garachico, now 68, of Arevalo district and who was the driver of the pickup truck that Dominado and Arado were in when abducted, said he sometimes loses hope of ever seeing his fellow activists alive again.
Garachico was fortunate to survive with his life after being shot and left for dead by the armed men who kidnapped Dominado and Arado.
“I can’t say for sure if they were left alive because the pickup they took was burnt in Janiuay,” he admitted.
Garachico recounted to Panay News how, while traveling back to Iloilo City from San Jose, Antique after campaigning for their party-list groups, their vehicle was suddenly stopped.
“We were suddenly blocked by a van, then gunmen approached our vehicle and shot me,” Garachico said.
One suspect sat in the driver’s side of the pickup and fled with the van.
He received some leads, said Garachico, from friends suggesting that Dominado and Arado were thrown into a well and burnt.
“I survived with a gunshot wound to the neck, but the two have never been found. We pursued all legal avenues, and after the incident, teams of human rights advocates and families have searched for them where they might have been hidden, but to no avail,” Garachico said.
May Wan, when her mother disappeared, was only 24, and her younger sibling was 14. The incident shattered her life plans.
She was in Metro Manila preparing for the bar examination when she learned of the abduction. This forced her to abandon her exam preparations and return to Iloilo City the day after learning of the incident.
May Wan said her mother had received numerous threats before her abduction. Maria Luisa was continuously red-tagged, accused by state forces of being a commander of the New People’s Army (NPA).
“She was tagged as ‘Commander Posa’ of the NPA. But in fact, she was an activist who had been fighting for human rights since the Martial Law era (of then President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr.). The threats against her never ceased, but neither was her principled stance,” May Wan said.
But hope springs eternal in the human breast. This year, as activists and families commemorated the International Day of the Disappeared, they not only remembered the missing but also reinvigorated their call for justice and an end to the brutal practice of enforced disappearances.
May Wan lamented that under the administration of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., 12 activists were reported missing or abducted already since 2022, signalling that the practice of enforced disappearance is continuing.
She called on the government, particularly the state forces, to reveal the whereabouts of all the desaparecidos and to stop the practice of enforced disappearances.
“End the impunity that allows these human rights violations, giving state forces the arrogance to abduct and kill, violating human rights without facing justice,” she said./PN
