RELATIVES of missing activists James Jazmines and Felix Salaveria yesterday asked the Supreme Court to issue writs of amparo and habeas data directing authorities to surface the two they claimed were abducted by state security forces.
A writ of amparo (a Spanish word that means protection) is a special writ to protect or enforce a constitutional right other than physical liberty, while a writ of habeas data is a petition asking the court to compel the respondent to delete or destroy damaging information.
The petitions were filed by Jazmines’ wife Cora, and Salaveria’s daughters Gabreyel and Felicia. They were assisted by the National Union of Peoples Lawyers and the La Vina, Zarate and Associates firm.
They two went missing last August in Albay.
Jazmines is a brother of Alan Jazmines, a consultant of the National Democratic Front.
Impleaded in the petition are President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, PNP chief Gen. Rommel Francisco Marbil, AFP chief Gen. Romeo Brawner, PNP-CIDG chief Gen. Nicolas Torre III, Bicol region Police Director Gen. Andre Dizon, Albay Police Provincial Director Col. Julius Anonuevo, CIDG Region 5 chief Col. Ivy Castillo, and Tabaco City Police chief Lt. Col. Edmundo Cerillo.
The petitioners said they decided to seek the SC’s intervention as they had already exhausted all avenues to locate the two activists, including searching in military camps and police, to no avail.
They said CCTV footages taken during the abduction of the two last August in Albay only “led them to stronger suspicion that it was state agents who abducted James and Felix who were being surveilled for quite some time according to witnesses.”
“Their efforts to frustrate the search, willful abdication of their duty to investigate and provide information, and refusal to lift a finger to relieve petitioners’ plight transgresses petitioners’ rights to security of person and informational privacy,” the 70-page petition said, adding that the “professional orchestration of the abduction and the swift seizure indicates a nexus between the State and the perpetrators.”
They added that several people in the area where the abduction took place, including the barangay chairperson who confronted and asked some of the “suspicious-looking men” what they were doing, replied they were “intelligence” on the lookout for a “malaking tao” or big guy.
The description, they said, matched Salaveria’s build.
“The CCTV footage shows that the abduction was no random event. It was well-planned and professionally executed,” the petitioners said, adding that Jazmines’ abduction was ‘symptomatic of the vilification, labelling and guilt by association that typifies red-tagging and red-baiting,” considering he is a brother of an NDF consultant.
As to why Marcos was included as a respondent, Karapatan deputy secretary general and lawyer Maria Sol Taule said the President “cannot just keep quiet and wash his hands clean of the abduction” which, she added, was “obviously done by the authorities based on the policies of the President.”
“Marcos Jr. should order all his uniformed men to surface James and Felix now,” Taule added.
She said the abduction of the two are the 13th and 14th such cases to happen since Marcos assumed power in 2022.
