Mother continues search for activist son abducted 17 years ago

FOR 17 years, Edita Burgos has looked inside body bags, visited military camps, led street protests and filed court cases in a desperate search for her missing son Jonas.

He was 37 and a prominent activist for a left-wing farmers group when he was bundled by a group of unknown men into a vehicle at a Manila shopping mall in 2007.

He has not been seen since.

This photo, taken on Aug. 1, 2024, shows Edita Burgos, mother of missing activist Jonas Burgos, speaking as she sits next to a portrait of her vanished son. AFP PHOTO

Human rights group Karapatan estimates hundreds of people have gone missing or died in extrajudicial killings since the government began fighting a communist insurgency in the late 1960s.

The military accused Jonas of being a high-ranking communist rebel leader but has always denied involvement in his disappearance.

Edita, a mother of five, is the protagonist in a new documentary by her youngest son, JL Burgos, that examines Jonas' abduction and the family's soul-crushing search for him.

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While Jonas' political views echoed those of the rebels, Edita doesn't know if her middle son was a communist.

She said it shouldn't matter anyway.

«Whatever he was, no one has the right to kill somebody, not even a rapist,» Edita, 80, told Agence France-Presse ahead of the screening of «Alipato at Muog» (Spark and Fortress) at the country's independent film festival Cinemalaya earlier this month.

«You have to take them to court, not make them vanish.» No one has ever been convicted over Jonas' abduction, despite the Court of Appeals, Supreme Court and the independent Commission on Human Rights finding that members of the military were involved.

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An army major was arrested in 2013 and put on trial for the alleged arbitrary detention of Jonas, but he was acquitted in 2017 after a key witness failed to testify.

JL, 50, said he was «haunted» by his older brother's disappearance and suffered a «breakdown» as he worked on the documentary over eight months.

He hoped the film would prompt someone to come forward with information about Jonas' whereabouts — even if it were just his remains.

«Logically, he should no longer be alive, but then we cannot