CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—Family, friends and colleagues of environmental activist and radio host Joey Estriber gathered in Baler, Aurora, on Sunday to condemn the seventh year of his disappearance.
The investigation, they said, has shown “zero result.”
Some 400 people attended a 10 a.m. Mass to seek justice for Estriber and two victims of what they consider to be extrajudicial killings—Dutch activist Wilhelmus Geertman and election officer Waldo Palispis.
Later, they marched about a kilometer to reach the site of Estriber’s abduction, lighting candles there, said Josefina Marino, Estriber’s colleague at the Bataris Formation Center.
Lourdes, Estriber’s wife, appealed to President Aquino to act and help them find Estriber alive or find his grave.
Estriber, then 27, was picked up by a group of men and pushed into a waiting van just as he stepped out of an Internet café at 6 p.m. on March 3, 2006, a report by the Multi-Sectoral Action Group of Aurora (MSAG), citing accounts of witnesses.
Appeal to Aquino
“Now, seven years later after this terrible incident, Joey is still missing. When [President Aquino] was elected President, there was a sprinkle of hope. Maybe he and his administration could solve Joey’s abduction and bring the perpetrators to court,” Alfonso van Zijl, MSAG secretary, said in a statement.
“There’s zero result in the investigation,” he told the Inquirer by telephone on Sunday.
This, he said, happened despite the aid of the Commission of Human Rights.
He rued that the government has not arrested retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan Jr., under whose stint the abduction happened.
The government has offered a P2-million bounty for any information that would lead to the arrest of Palparan, the former commander of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division in Central Luzon and parts of Pangasinan, who is facing charges for the abduction of University of the Philippines students Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan.
Records of the human rights group, Karapatan, showed that 136 incidents of human rights violations happened during Palparan’s tour of duty in Central Luzon, including 71 summary executions and 46 enforced disappearances, which included Estriber’s case.
Radio show
As staff member of Bataris, Estriber cohosted the radio show, “Pag-usapan Natin,” on dzJO-FM, focusing on logging and mining by corporations and military harassment in communities where farmers, Dumagat, Agta and Cordillerans defend their lands and fishing grounds.
Van Zijl said that before Estriber was abducted, the military put up streamers calling Bataris and people’s organizations as fronts of the New People’s Army.
In December 2005, suspected soldiers or their men burned the sleeping quarters of Bataris.
“And some days before Joey was abducted, four soldiers disturbed the seminar given by Joey on Charter change, held in the premises of the Mount Carmel College in Baler,” Van Zijl said.
The commander of the Army’s 48th Infantry Battalion then, Col. Joselito Kakilala, denied that his men were involved in the abduction.
“We call on the government to do serious efforts to resolve the case of Joey and all other victims of human rights violations so the present state and climate of impunity will be broken and justice will be done,” Van Zijl said.