‘Another reason to find Palparan’

Jovito Palparan Jr. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—The wife of missing environmental activist and radio host Joey Estriber has urged the government to find Jovito Palparan and make the fugitive retired major general reveal what he knows about the abduction of her husband.

Lourdes Estriber, who marked the sixth anniversary of her husband’s disappearance on Saturday, said the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) should compel  Palparan to divulge information because he was commander of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division based in Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija, when four armed men  seized her husband just as he stepped out of an Internet shop in Baler, Aurora, on March 3, 2006.

“We want to know who seized him and where they brought, dumped or buried his body. I hope the top brass of the AFP would help us by releasing information and help us get justice for Joey, and closure for us his family and friends,” Estriber told the Philippine Daily Inquirer by phone from Baler on Saturday.

Singapore bound

Palparan, formally accused in the kidnapping of two University of the Philippines  students, went into hiding on Dec. 20, 2011, a day after airport immigration personnel stopped him from boarding a plane bound for Singapore.

Palparan has also been implicated in the disappearance of agriculturist and peasant organizer Jonas Burgos, who was abducted from a Quezon City mall on April 28, 2007. Like Estriber, Burgos has remained missing.

The former Army commanding general, who became a party-list representative in Congress, has denied any hand in these and other disappearances.

Palparan, a security adviser of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, told a court in Bulacan that he was evading an arrest warrant because the allegations against him had not undergone a preliminary investigation.

Courage , commitment

Estriber’s friends and former coworkers in Bataris, a nongovernment  organization, gathered outside the site of the abduction for a liturgy and  short program to recall his courage and commitment in fighting illegal logging and mining.

“He was a good man who loved his province and its people too much. He  fought for the interest of farmers and indigenous peoples. He took his advocacy to the radio so that people could have information on how to help protect Mother Nature,” said Alfonso van Zijl, executive director of Bataris.

His wife also appealed to Estriber’s abductors. “I want to give  answers to our children [when they ask if their father is still alive]. I can’t answer them and that makes it all the more painful,” she said.

Estriber was secretary general of the Multi-Sectoral Alliance of Aurora, and he led campaigns against logging, mining and commercial shrimp-growing in the province, which hosts one of the last forest frontiers of Central Luzon.

On dwJO-FM, he hosted the weekly program “Pag-usapan Natin.”

Witnesses reported seeing men throw Estriber into a heavily tinted maroon Kia Besta van which had no license plate.

Charter change forum

Troops from the Army’s 48th Infantry Battalion (IB) were suspected to have taken Estriber after the victim stopped four soldiers from attending a campaign planning forum on Charter change on February 28.

In a text message to the Inquirer that day, Estriber identified two of the soldiers who barged into the forum as 2nd Lt. Donato Molina and a Sergeant Sanchez.

Colonel Joselito Kakilala, commander of the 48th IB commander then, denied his men had a role in the abduction.

Estriber is one of more than 30 people who went missing during the one-year stint of Palparan in Central Luzon until Sept. 11, 2006.

Efforts by the Prelature of Infanta, Commission on Human Rights, Reporters without Frontiers and United Nations Human Rights Commission to locate Estriber have proved futile, his spouse said.

Aside from disappearances, hundreds of activists and journalists were summarily killed during the term of Arroyo, who is now in jail awaiting trail on election cheating charges.