A brother of a National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) peace consultant is missing, possibly a victim of enforced disappearance, a rights group said in an alert.
On the eve of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, human rights group Karapatan announced that James Jazmines had been missing since August 23.
The victim was last seen in Barangay San Lorenzo in Tabaco City, Albay.
Himself an activist, James is NDFP peace negotiator Alan Jazminez’s younger brother. He is 63 years old.
“As of today, efforts by his wife, friends, and human rights groups to ascertain his whereabouts have been in vain,” Karapatan said.
A 1978 graduate of the Philippine Science High School and a BS Psychology student at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, James served as editor of Commitment, the official paper of the League of Filipino Students (LFS) in his younger days.
He later became the executive director of the Amado V. Hernandez Resource Center, a cultural institution.
From 1988 to 1992, he served as the information officer of the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) labor center.
James was an information technology (IT) consultant of a development NGO up to the mid-2000s, and has been working freelance in the IT sector since then, Karapatan said.
“Members of the Jazmines family, including James, have suffered surveillance, threats and harassment over the decades because of the military’s relentless operations to locate Alan and arrest him,” said Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay.
“In fact, James’ wife, a development worker, was red-tagged several times last year and was even erroneously referred to as Alan’s wife in an episode of ‘Laban ng Masa,’ a rabid red-tagging program aired over the Quiboloy-owned SMNI,” Palabay added.
Palabay said they believe that James’ disappearance is either the latest in the military’s arsenal of dirty tricks to force his brother Alan to surface or is a vicious example of palit-ulo, given the military’s continuing failure to find Alan.
Palit-ulo (literally, exchange of heads) is a tactic where state forces kidnap family members to force wanted persons to surrender themselves.
“We denounce this foul maneuver by the military and demand that James be surfaced safe and sound and reunited with his family,” Palabay said.
As of November 2023, Karapatan has documented 263 victims of enforced disappearance since 2001.
The Commission on Human Rights meanwhile said it has monitored 145 victims of enforced or involuntary disappearance since the enactment of Republic Act 10353, also known as the Anti-Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance Act of 2012.
Established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2010, the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances every August 30 highlights the grave injustices faced by countless individuals and their families around the world.
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