Political Abduction -- Jayjay Burgos

From the column of Ellen Tordesillas:

Pray for Jayjay

What struck me in that Pieta-like picture of Edith Burgos holding the picture of her missing son was the close resemblance of Jonas Joseph (Jayjay) to his father Joe Burgos, press freedom crusader and founder of We Forum and Malaya.

A witness to the abduction of Jayjay surfaced the other night at ABS-CBN after he saw Edith appealing for help to find her son.

The witness who hid under the name “Randy” said he saw Jayjay eating alone at the Hapag-Kainan restaurant at the Ever Gotesco Mall on Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City about 1 p.m. when four “bodyguard-looking” men approached him. At first, Randy said, one of guys put his hand on Jayjay shoulders. “Hinihimas-himas,” was Randy’s description. I can imagine that it was a hard massage that the bodyguard-looking guy was applying on Jayjay.

Randy related that all of a sudden the burly men pulled Jayjay from his seat and forcefully brought him out of the mall. Jayjay was shouting, “Tulungan nyo ako! Dinudukot ako! Aktibista ako!” (Help me! I’m being abducted! I’m an activist!)

Randy said nobody dared help Jayjay. “Then everything went back to normal in the mall,” he said.

What Jayjay did, shouting and asking for help, is one of the tips in “staying alive” for journalists and activists in these dangerous times.

A former colleague in Malaya last night texted me they have information that it was elements of ISAFP (Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines) that abducted Jayjay. “Please pray,” she said.

I’m praying that Jayjay, married and a father to a one-year old baby, be given the strength to survive what he is going through. I’m also praying that God touch the conscience of his abductors and stop their malevolent operation.

An agriculture graduate of Benguet State University, Jayjay is a member of Alyansa ng Magbubukid, a chapter of militant peasant organization Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), which is in the watchlist of the military.

The morning before he was abducted Jayjay conducted a seminar on organic farming.

It’s easy to imagine where Jayjay got his interest in agriculture and concern for the plight of the disadvantaged. After retiring from journalism, Joe Burgos took up farming in Bulacan.

I can’t remember particularly Jayjay when he was much younger. He is 36 years old now so he must have been 13 years old when he and his brothers and sister would do summer work in Malaya as copy boys or proofreaders while we were pushing the limits of press freedom under a dictatorship.

He must have been 11 years old when his father, grandfather, uncle, and friends of his father who were columnists of We Forum, Malaya’s sister-publication, were arrested and jailed in December 1982 for publishing stories critical of Ferdinand Marcos, especially about his fake war medals which US publications picked up three years later.

Jayjay was just six years old when his father decided that he would not allow martial law to curtail his right to inform the public about the truth. We Forum’s first issue came out on May 1, 1977. That marked the birth of the alternative press.

Tapping 18 campus editors as correspondents, Joe gave the Filipino public stories that would not see print in the mainstream newspapers. On the day the first copies of We Forum hit the streets, the Metrocom (Metropolitan Command of the Philippine Constabulary) arrested three of the student editors covering the Labor Day rally.

That was exactly 30 years ago. Today, the life of the son of a man who helped regain our freedom is in peril under the custody of unidentified elements of repression. It’s as if nothing has changed.

From where he is now, Joe Burgos must be in grief.