Yet another government body will take up the case of missing activist Jonas Burgos, son of the late press freedom icon Jose Burgos Jr.
The investigation of Burgos’ abduction in 2007 will be among the “priority cases” of the superbody created by President Aquino last year to look into past and present cases of human rights violations in the country, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said on Thursday.
De Lima said the committee’s technical working group had initially identified 101 priority cases of extralegal killings reported to the authorities from 2001 to 2012.
The committee, she said, would make a thorough review of the cases on the list within the week before finalizing those which should be taken up immediately.
“In the initial list that we had, the Jonas Burgos case was included,” De Lima said.
De Lima, former chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), presided over the third regular meeting in Camp Aguinaldo of the nine-member interagency committee tasked with investigating cases of extralegal killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other grave human rights violations.
“Yes, definitely. [The case of] Burgos is on the priority list,” the justice secretary told reporters after the meeting.
Besides the justice secretary, the chair of the Presidential Human Rights Committee, the secretaries of the interior and of national defense, and the presidential advisers on the peace process and for political affairs were named members of the committee.
Also assigned to help the body were the chiefs of the Philippine National Police, the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the National Bureau of Investigation.
Independent probe
De Lina explained that the committee’s probe of Burgos’ disappearance would be independent of the investigation that the NBI would conduct as ordered by Aquino.
The superbody’s work will also be different from the respective investigations to be carried out by the PNP, AFP and CHR, which were all directed by both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals to continue their own inquiry into Burgos’ abduction.
“The mandate of this committee is to monitor the progress of the investigation [by the NBI] independent of what has been directed by both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals,” De Lima said.
Operational guidelines
During the closed-door meeting, De Lima said representatives of concerned agencies approved the operational guidelines in the implementation of Administrative Order No. 35, which the President signed in November 2012, creating the committee.
She said the operational guidelines spelled out the definitions and elements of extralegal killings, torture, enforced disappearances and other human rights violations.
The justice secretary said the guidelines also included the creation of various teams tasked with investigating and monitoring cases of extrajudicial killings.
Oversight teams
Oversight teams and other groups will be assigned to revisit and solve unsolved cases, and monitor pending cases.
“We have already presented the list of priority cases which should be taken up first and which should be monitored, as they are already under preliminary investigation or trial,” De Lima said.
In line with the operational guidelines, the committee set a timetable for each team to conduct and conclude an investigation, De Lima said.
“There will be mechanisms prescribed or outlined in the operational guidelines regarding the period, which the teams should follow in conducting special investigations for new and existing cases, and for special oversight teams,” she said.
Agriculturist
Burgos was an agriculturist involved in promoting organic farming among the rural folk in Bulacan province. Previous news reports attributed to the military suggested that the young Burgos was a communist guerrilla commander. He was 36 years old when he was abducted by unidentified men on April 28, 2007, at Ever Gotesco Mall in Quezon City. He has not been seen since.
His father published hard-hitting newspapers against then President Ferdinand Marcos and was detained several times during the martial law regime in the 1970s and early ’80s.
On April 1, Burgos’ mother, Edita, petitioned the Supreme Court to order the Court of Appeals to put on trial military officers and men for her son’s abduction, claiming she has a new “bomb” of an evidence against them.
Maj. Harry Baliaga Jr.
The appellate court on March 18 ruled that Burgos’ abduction was an enforced disappearance and held Maj. Harry Baliaga Jr. and the Army responsible. It also tasked the PNP with conducting an “exhaustive investigation” of the disappearance.
In her urgent petition, Edita said she had confidential documents that would show that officers and enlisted personnel of intelligence units of the 7th Infantry Division and 56th Infantry Battalion, operating together, had abducted Burgos.
After-apprehension report
The documents, which she submitted in a sealed package to the Supreme Court, purportedly included confidential official reports on file in the Army, including an after-apprehension report, a psychosocial processing report and an autobiography of Burgos. The papers contained the identities of officers and men of the two units.
Edita earlier claimed that a military memo she had seen listed her son in an “order of battle” of communist guerrillas and that next to his name was written the word “neutralized.”