MANILA, Philippines ? Edita Burgos, mother of missing activist Jonas Burgos and chair of the human rights group Desaparecidos (The Disappeared), will arrive in the United Kingdom on Thursday on the first leg of a European tour to highlight the problem of involuntary disappearances in the Philippines.

?I am coming to the UK in the hope that I can help people realize what is happening to good people like my son and many, many others in the Philippines,? Burgos said in a statement sent to the Inquirer by the London-based Campaign for Human Rights in the Philippines (CHRP)-UK, which invited her.

In the statement, Burgos mentioned next year?s elections in the Philippines, saying, ?I want us to elect honest people who will help end disappearances. If we do not put people there who will be sincere in dismantling all the institutions used to abduct people, these disappearances will not end.?

Burgos will speak on Oct. 21 at a forum organized by CHRP-UK together with Amnesty International-UK and the British trade union group Unison at the AI Human Rights Action Centre.

CHRP-UK said Burgos? UK engagement is part of a European tour to draw attention to the plight of her son and the disturbing human rights record of the Arroyo administration and its military leaders.

US tour last year

Last year, Burgos spent a month touring the United States to raise international awareness of human rights violations in the Philippines. She also met with United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston, whose own assessment was that the military anti-insurgency campaign in the country had something to do with the disappearances and extrajudicial killing of hundreds of Filipino activists, as well as human rights lawyers, journalists and labor leaders.

Jonas, 36 at the time of his abduction, was an agriculturist and land rights activist connected with the Alyansang Magbubukid ng Gitnang Luzon, a local affiliate of the militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas. He was abducted by gunmen in broad daylight from a restaurant in a shopping mall in Quezon City on April 28, 2007.

The son of the late newspaper publisher Joe Burgos Jr., an internationally recognized press freedom hero, Jonas? disappearance has drawn much media attention.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had personally called up Burgos to assure her the police would aggressively pursue the case of her son. Little progress, however, has been made in the case.

Burgos had testified before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that she believed the Philippine military was behind the abduction of her son.

?Order of Battle?

Witnesses had listed the plate number of the vehicle used by Jonas? abductors and traced it to an army camp in Bulacan.

Burgos claimed a confidential military memo shown to her shortly after his abduction had Jonas? name on a list dubbed ?Order of Battle? which many believe was a list of communist insurgents targeted for arrest or elimination. Next to Jonas? name was written the word ?neutralized,? she said.

The CHRP-UK statement said the Philippine government has since promoted three officers implicated in the vehicle issue. The officers said the license plate had apparently been stolen from their camp.

?The promotion of these men only confirms the truth in our claim that the government, the state forces, are behind the disappearances,? Burgos said.