FREEDOM DENIED
Many of the victims of human rights abuses in the Philippines come from poor families who can ill afford to campaign for their release or travel the archipelago to identify unearthed corpses.
There is also the fear of retaliation
Siche Bustamante Gandinao, a member of a left-wing political party, was killed in March last year. The previous month, she had testified before the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings about the murder of her father-in-law, also an activist.
Edita Burgos says military agents followed her, her daughter and her son for a while after Jonas's abduction. But the 64-year old grandmother is not afraid.
During the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, who was overthrown in 1986, Edita and her late husband, Joe, ran an anti-regime newspaper.
Joe, who was imprisoned for a week in 1982, died in 2003 but he is still revered as a hero of press freedom.
Today, Burgos runs the "Free Jonas Burgos Movement" from the same small office where she and her husband once worked.
Media awards line the shelves along with old clippings, including a headline from a pro-Marcos newspaper about Joe Burgos's arrest that reads: "Burgos linked to terror plot".
"It is ironic that the freedom that we fought for is the freedom that is being deprived for my son," she said.
A DEVIL
Like other relatives, Burgos is hoping the legal system can help her find her 38-year-old son, an agriculturalist who was an affiliate member of a farmers' organisation that the military has tagged an "enemy of the state".
Last year, the Supreme Court granted magistrates broader powers to force the military to provide evidence and open up their camps to inspection in an effort to halt the killings.
A handful of people have been released from military custody following the Supreme Court's move, including Ruel Munasque, an activist who was freed in November last year after two weeks.
But Munasque's lawyer has not been able to contact his client this year and suspects he has gone underground.
"I tried to explain to him that he would not be killed by the military because he already has the protection of the writ of amparo (which holds public authorities more accountable to the people)," said Tirsendo Poloyapoy.
"He seemed not to understand, probably because he was suffering mental torture all the time when he was in the possession of the military."
Burgos, a devout Catholic, relies on her faith to help her deal with what has happened.
"I'm not angry at those that tortured him and those that abducted him because they are just following orders. In fact, I pity them because they have allowed themselves to be used by the dark side.
"You do not torture a human being without being a devil yourself."
