{"id":10283,"date":"2024-11-08T00:05:40","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T23:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/?p=10283"},"modified":"2024-11-07T16:45:25","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T15:45:25","slug":"government-silent-on-the-disappearance-of-activists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/government-silent-on-the-disappearance-of-activists\/","title":{"rendered":"Government silent on the disappearance of activists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Filipino activists James Jazmines and Felix Salaveria Jr. have<\/a> been missing since the end of August 2024. According<\/a> to the human rights organization Karapatan, Jazmines worked as an IT expert for a development organization, among others; Salaveria was an enthusiastic cyclist who was committed to ecological concerns and indigenous rights in the Albay region.<\/p>\n

63-year-old James Jazmines is the younger brother of former National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP)<\/a> peace adviser Alan Jazmines and disappeared<\/a> on August 23, 2023, in Tabaco City, Albay province, after attending the birthday party of 66-year-old Felix Salaveria. \u201cAfter the party, Jazmines left<\/a> on his bicycle and has not been seen since,\u201d the family said. According to eyewitnesses, five days after Jazmines was reported missing, plainclothes men forced<\/a> Salaveria into a silver van, which has since disappeared. The eyewitnesses also reported<\/a> that police officers confiscated personal belongings such as a cell phone and laptop from Salaveria’s apartment after his abduction.<\/p>\n

In September, Karapatan released<\/a> CCTV footage of Salaveria’s alleged abduction. Cristina Palabay, secretary general of Karapatan, described<\/a> the abductions as \u201chighly organized\u201d operations that have parallels with previous abductions by state security forces. Palabay explained<\/a> that the Philippine government’s continued silence on the abductions can be seen as a violation of the national Anti-Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance Act (Republic Act 10353), which has been in force since 2012. This law obliges<\/a> state institutions to disclose information on the whereabouts of missing persons and to make all detention centers accessible for inspections by the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (CHR). The CHR launched<\/a> an investigation in mid-September 2024 to determine the whereabouts of Jazmines and Salaveria and identify those responsible.<\/p>\n

The families of Jazmines and Salaveria reported<\/a> that the two felt they had been under surveillance for many years and were threatened through so-called \u201cred-tagging\u201d (i.e. branding individuals or organizations as \u201cterrorist\u201d). The families launched<\/a> a petition in September 2024 to encourage the authorities to conduct a full investigation and safely repatriate the two activists.<\/p>\n

To mark the two-year anniversary of the death of government-critical journalist Percival \u201cPercy Lapid<\/a>\u201d Mabasa, Senator Risa Hontiveros and other politicians called<\/a> for justice for his killing on October 3, 2024. The alleged mastermind in Mabasa\u2019s killing, Gerald Bantag, former head of the Bureau of Corrections, is still at large. According to the Global Witness Index published in September 2024, the Philippines is<\/a> the deadliest country for environmental activists in Asia for the 11th year in a row. According to Global Witness, 17 Filipino environmental activists were<\/a> killed in 2023.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo \u00a9 Raffy Lerma<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Filipino activists James Jazmines and Felix Salaveria Jr. have been missing since the end of August 2024. According to the human rights organization Karapatan, Jazmines worked as an IT expert for a development organization, among others; Salaveria was an enthusiastic cyclist who was committed to ecological concerns and indigenous rights in the Albay region. 63-year-old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[73,63,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aktuelles-en","category-human-rights-defenders","category-human-rights-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10283"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10347,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10283\/revisions\/10347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}