People’s manhunt

It took all of five and a half years to get the wheels of justice turning against Jovito Palparan, and now they seem to have ground to a halt—but we hope, very briefly.

The retired Army major general is one of the principal accused in the disappearance of Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño, both students of the University of the Philippines, who were abducted in Bulacan in June 2006 allegedly by soldiers belonging to the 7th Infantry Division then headed by Palparan. The student activists were suspected of being members of the communist New People’s Army.

Palparan and three of his subordinates were charged with various offenses before the Bulacan Regional Trial Court, and government prosecutors approved the filing of kidnapping and serious illegal detention last Dec. 16. Facing the prospect of being finally brought before a court of law, Palparan declared with characteristic bravado that he would not run or hide but answer the charges in court. “Why should I hide?” he said. “It is useless to hide. I just want a speedy trial.” Two days later, he had his bags packed and he was ready to go to Singapore. Immigration agents, citing a watch-list order issued by the Department of Justice, barred him from leaving at the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport. That was the last time authorities saw him.

The day after Palparan’s aborted flight, Judge Teodora Gonzalez issued a warrant for his arrest. But by then the game of cat and mouse had already begun, with the mouse apparently outsmarting the cat until now. Palparan has been titillating government officials with offers of surrender, only to leave them frustrated. First he sent feelers to the National Bureau of Investigation, then to the Department of Justice, and finally to the Philippine National Police. Nothing came of these overtures, and red-faced law-enforcement officials have been reduced to speculating that Palparan must still be in the country and pleading that he turn himself, or warning that the long arm of the law would reach him anytime. President Aquino himself could not set a deadline for the fugitive’s capture but just gave the assurance that “given enough time, and perhaps very soon, you will see positive results.”

How soon is “very soon,” no one in government apparently can say. In the meantime, the Armed Forces has announced that it would join the hunt for the man the activists called “Berdugo,”  a welcome sign that the military may be turning away from the practices that made Palparan some kind of model or hero in the anti-communist campaign. However getting the military involved could also mean that our law enforcement agencies are making little progress in its efforts to find Palparan.

It was probably a mistake for anyone to believe that Palparan would keep his word in the first place. Etta Rosales, chair of the Commission on Human Rights, says authorities should not trust him because his whole record showed he cannot be trusted. “He had no accountability,” she said. “He took shortcuts to do his job. He violated human rights.”

Now law-enforcement officials seem to agree that Palparan cannot be taken at this word. They have put up a P500,000 reward for any information that would lead to his capture. The idea apparently is to encourage people to get actively involved in the hunt.

But with or without the reward, Filipinos should get involved. Palparan is not just the accused abductor of two students, he represented the worst of the anti-communist hard-liners in the military organization and lived by the principle that the AFP has “the authority to terrorize the bad elements of society.” Once he got into a position of authority, he unleashed a reign of terror wherever he was assigned, especially in Mindoro, in Samar and in Central Luzon. The crimes attributed to him directly or indirectly easily surpass 1,000 cases, 700 of them in his last assignment, which was Central Luzon. And these crimes cover the whole spectrum of human rights violations from forced disappearances to murder, from rape to torture.

If ever there was someone who deserved to be called an enemy of the people, it must be Palparan. Bringing him to justice for the Cadapan and Empeño kidnapping will be a big first step toward finding justice for the thousands who disappeared or who died via extrajudicial executions in the hands of official agents of the law. And if that is what is required to find him, then everyone should join in what an alliance of human rights advocates calls a people’s manhunt for Palparan.