Missing UP student showed up over a month ago – militant group

By Ronron
June 29, 2007

Militant groups disclosed Friday the “popping up” of a student of the University of the Philippines whom they claim was abducted by government troops last year in Bulacan.

Karapatan and Desaparecidos groups said Sherlyn Cadapan, a student from the UP College of Human Kinetics, showed up at the residence of her mother-in-law in a northern Luzon province (Bulacan or Bataan) sometime late April or early May of this year.

“She (Cadapan) just popped up. Apparently, she just hugged that person (her mother-in-law) and left without a word after collecting personal belongings,” Karapatan spokesperson Ruth Cervantes said in an interview.

Militant groups said Cadapan was in an immersion and research study in Hagonoy, Bulacan together with fellow UP student Karen Empeño when they were abducted, along with peasant Manuel Merino, by soldiers last June 26, 2006.

The militant groups said the military suspected the three to be members of the New People’s Army (NPA).

Cervantes said during Cadapan’s quick appearance, “it seems that she is under duress” because two women and four burly men, wearing civilian clothes, were in her company, thus preventing her from talking.

Cervantes said they suspect Cadapan’s military custodians to have purposely brought her out so that people will believe she is not being kept by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

She also sees it as means for the military to know other relatives of Cadapan.

But Cervantes said the development just bolstered belief of Cadapan’s family that indeed, she is being held by the AFP.

“It still does not change the suspicion of the family that it was indeed the military who is holding her in custody because in the hearings at the Court of Appeals, we have presented so many evidence and witnesses testifying that the military really took the person,” Cervantes said.

The family of Cadapan and Empeno have filed last year a petition for habeas corpus before the CA against the AFP in relation to their disappearance. The court hearing has yet to wrap up but the AFP had made initial pronouncements of denial about the allegation.

Cervantes reiterated that if the AFP believes Cadapan is a communist rebel, they should just charge her in court and not detain her.

Sought for comment, Philippine National Police (PNP) Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management (DIDM) chief Director Geary Barias said that though the disappearance case is not under the mandate of the PNP Task Force USIG, which he now heads, he will order for an investigation into the said development.

“As chief of the DIDM, we will have that investigated by the Regional Investigation and Detection Management in Police Regional Office III. I will order my men there to get in touch with the family, particularly the mother-in-law, of Ms. Cadapan,” Barias said.

Barias said he hopes the family of Cadapan and Empeno will cooperate in their investigation so the case can be solved.

Barias lamented that during the time of the incident, the family refused to cooperate with TF USIG on the suspicion that they were influenced by Karapatan, which is anti-government.

The Desaparecidos claims there have been 180 victims of forced disappearances since 2001 up to this day, the most recent of whom was Jonas Joseph Burgos./DMS