"He went out to find work so he could buy food for lunch that day," she said. "When he did not return, I thought he went to his parents until I found out three days later that he was taken by soldiers." Laher said she believes her husband, a farmer called Felix Balaston, was mistaken for a communist rebel and taken prisoner by soldiers in Quezon, a hotbed of insurgents.
"I'm losing hope that I will ever see him alive again," she said as relatives of other victims of human rights abuses shouted through a megaphone. "I just hope that if he's dead already, they give me his body." Laher's husband is one of 12 reported victims of enforced disappearances during the two-year administration of President Benigno Aquino III, who has been criticised by human rights groups for failing to keep promises to stop the abuses and punish those responsible.
"The government would say that the number of incidents has gone down, but we hold the view that one killing is too many and one individual denied justice is too many," said Cristina Palabay, secretary general of human rights group Karapatan. From the start of Aquino's mandate in July 2010 to the end of October, Karapatan has recorded at least 129 victims of extrajudicial killings, 72 cases of torture, and more than 230 cases of illegal arrests and detention.
During former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's term from 2001 to June 2010, 1,205 political activists are thought to have been killed, and 206 disappeared. Aquino has stressed that human rights is priority and last month created an inter-agency committee to investigate old and new cases of extrajudicial killings and other abuses.
Justice Secretary Leila De Lima, head of the committee, said she hoped the creation of the investigative body would assuage criticisms that Aquino was not doing enough to resolve past cases and stop the attacks. Karapatan said the government's campaign against a communist rebellion was to blame for many of the human rights violations. Despite the global collapse of communist regimes since 1980s, the movement remained strong in the Philippines, feeding on widespread poverty in the countryside.
"2012 saw the intensification of military operations and heavy deployment of troops in areas believed to be strongholds of the Communist Party of the Philippines and (its armed wing) the New People's Army," Karapatan said in a year-end report. "Killings are again becoming gruesome as in martial law years," it added. One recent case was the killing of a 27-year-old pregnant anti-mining advocate and her two sons aged 14 and 7 by soldiers on October 18 in Kiblawan town in Davao del Sur province, 1,000 kilometres south of Manila. Her 5-year-old daughter was also injured in the shooting.
The military said Juvy Capion and her children were caught in crossfire between soldiers and her husband, Daguil, a tribal leader who has reportedly joined the communist insurgency to oppose mining operations in their town. The 13 soldiers involved face court martial proceedings. Erita Capion Dialang, sister of Daguil, said Juvy herself could have been targeted by the military because of her own role in the protests against the mines and the military presence in their tribal community.
"The soldiers mercilessly killed Juvy and her two sons when they strafed their home at the farm," she said. "My brother is now in hiding and he wasn't even able to bury his family." Dialang has received threats for campaigning against the military and mining. "If we can fight the soldiers ourselves, we will just do it because we don't think we will get any help to find justice for our family from this government," she said.
Human rights advocates were not easily appeased by the committee created by Aquino, which includes as its members the heads of state agencies that are accused of being behind the violations, particularly the military and the police. "We feel that this super body is just for window-dressing to camouflage the real situation of human rights in the country," Palabay said. "Government must recognise that the killings and abuses are being done in the course of its counter-insurgency policy."
Palabay said any investigative body must review the policy with a goal of scrapping it "to have a meaningful direction." "Many of these victims were being tagged as communists or enemies of state forces to justify their silencing," she said. "A super body devoid of that context will have a very shallow investigation."