Lawmakers ratify bicam report on bill criminalizing enforced disappearances

Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Lawmakers on Tuesday night ratified the bicameral report of a bill seeking to criminalize enforced disappearances.

Albay Representative Edcel Lagman, principal author of the Anti-Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance Act of 2012, deemed the congressional approval of its bicameral report as an important development.

“The occurrence of enforced or involuntary disappearance and the impunity of offenders who are agents of the State may now be finally consigned to the past,” he said.

The lawmaker said enforced disappearance, used by the martial law regime on protesters and human rights advocates, “continues to be employed by subsequent administrations after the end of the martial law regime.”

President Benigno Aquino III’s expected signing into law of the said measure would be “a milestone in Asia as it will be the first national law to criminalize enforced disappearance as a separate or distinct offense.”

The salient features of the measure are the following:

1.      The crime of enforced disappearance is generally imprescriptible as an exception to the statute of limitations.

2.      No amnesty can exempt any offender, either convicted or facing prosecution, from liability.

3.      No war or any public emergency can justify the suspension of the enforcement of the anti-disappearance law.

4.      Command responsibility makes a superior officer also culpable for violations of the law by subordinates.

5.      Subordinates are authorized to defy unlawful orders of superiors for the commission of enforced disappearance.

6.      A periodically updated registry of all detained persons is required in all detention centers.

7.      Secret detention facilities are prohibited.

8.      Compensation, restitution and rehabilitation of victims and kin are mandated.

9.      Gradation of penalties is prescribed with reclusion perpetua as the severest penalty.

10.     Human Rights organizations shall participate in the crafting of the necessary Implementing Rules and Regulations.