MANILA — More than a year after labor rights defender James Jazmines has been forcibly disappeared, his wife Cora Jazmines said that the government’s supposedly “swift” legal remedies ring hollow, leaving families like hers trapped in silence and uncertainty.

“We continue to wait for him to resurface. The Supreme Court (SC)’s response has taken so long, it took them eight months and now a hearing has only just been scheduled,” Cora said in an interview with Bulatlat.

James was abducted on August 23, 2024 around 10:00 p.m., after celebrating the birthday of his friend, Felix Salaveria, Jr. It was Salaveria who reported the disappearance of James. But five days later, he was also abducted. Both of them remain missing.

Cora, through her legal counsel National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), filed a petition for writs of amparo and habeas data for the disappearance of James on November 8, 2024. It also coincided with the filing of the same petition of Salaveria’s family and legal counsel. However, the case of Salaveria already has a decision from the Court of Appeals (CA), granting the privilege favorable to Salaveria and his family.

Read: Court scores gov’t failure to probe, surface missing activist Felix Salaveria Jr.

Waiting in agony

“I wrote a personal letter addressed to the justices of the Supreme Court (SC) and I went to deliver it personally,” Cora said. “I wrote in the letter that we filed the petitions because the writs are supposed to be a swift judicial remedy to secure the safety of the missing person. But eight months have already passed.”

The SC en banc notified Cora that the case had been raffled to the CA for hearing on July 3 but the court decision was signed on May 6. The high court also granted James and Cora with a temporary protection order.

“I don’t know what to feel about this. It feels like I am unsafe now because the military was notified that we complained. If you expect things to run smoothly, then you are expecting too much from the government. They are not really serious about protecting people,” Cora added.

Both writs of amparo and habeas data are summary in nature, with SC stating that time “cannot stand still when life, liberty or security is at stake.”

A search and fact-finding mission organized by human rights groups Karapatan and Desaparecidos, together with the families and human rights lawyer Tony La Viña, commenced last year as soon as the disappearance of James was reported.

“When I got the confirmation that he is missing, we immediately went to Tabaco City and we arrived on the 28th [of August]. We were expecting to see Felix, but on that very day, he was abducted,” Cora recalled, describing it like a scene in a telenovela.

They went to Barangay Cobo, Philippine National Police (PNP) Tabaco, and Albay Police Provincial Office. But instead of accommodating their concern with the presence of immediate family, they did not acquire any information from the police. The Region 5 headquarters of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) also refused to sign the inquiry form mandated by the Anti-Enforced Disappearance Law.

Read: Corazon’s search for her abducted husband, a labor rights defender

Complicity and stonewalling

The case of James was more challenging because the abduction was not caught on camera, unlike Salaveria’s case. However, in their petition, it was stated that the modus operandi indicates contemporaneity of the events and a common set of perpetrators.

In the pretext of investigation, the PNP Tabaco seized the personal belongings of James and Salaveria, without warrant or permission from their owner nor their families. NUPL wrote in their petition that, rather than investigating the two abductions, the police conducted a quick seizure of the belongings of the victims: an irregularity since James is not an offender.

“Certainly, James as a disappeared person could not have consented to the search and seizure of his personal effects. Neither did Petitioner assent to the taking for the purposes of investigation since her consent was never sought,” NUPL noted. “Whether James’s landlord handed over the items is beside the point because he had no authority to waive James’s right to security in his house—i.e., the rented room he used as his dwelling pursuant to a lease— and effects.”

The legal team further added that the PNP Tabaco failed to issue an inventory receipt mandated under the Rule 126 of the Revised Rules of Criminal Procedure. 

More than the irregularities in the police procedures, NUPL stressed that the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has been stonewalling the search of the family. 

Cora and the daughters of Salaveria went to Camp Aguinaldo to present inquiry forms under the Anti-Enforced Disappearance Law to certify that neither James nor Felix are in their custody. The following offices refused to sign or issue a certification: AFP Chief’s office, office of the Deputy Chief-of-Staff for Intelligence, and the Intelligence Service of the AFP.

“Their deliberate or negligent breach of the duty to observe extraordinary diligence in investigating James’s reported enforced disappearance not only cripples Petitioner’s efforts to see her husband again, but it also obstructs her efforts to seek justice for him,” NUPL said.

Fire to serve

James was already a young activist when Ferdinand Marcos Sr. ruled under dictatorship. At the University of the Philippines (UP), he joined the League of Filipino Students and later became editor of its newsletter, The Commitment. His writings soon carried him beyond the campus, to the picket lines where workers were demanding better conditions.

“We got to know each other during the tenth anniversary of First Quarter Storm,” his wife Cora recalled, referring to the wave of student- and worker-led protests that shook Marcos Sr.’s regime in the 1970s.

Even as a student, James was marked as a dissident. He was among those slapped with an arrest and seizure order, a threat that kept him from graduating at UP. “Even in college, he was already facing impending arrest,” Cora said.

But repression did not break him. Under Martial Law, he chose to deepen his commitment to workers, organizing under Kilusang Mayo Uno, teaching laborers how to write news, and introducing them to the emerging technologies that could amplify their struggles.

In 1984, James helped establish the Amado V. Hernandez Resource Center, an institution dedicated to advancing workers’ rights, serving as its founding executive director until 1988. Cora later took the helm until 1992. “We organized workshops where workers could articulate their lived experiences, even write poetry and stories,” she said. “Later, James would train them on computers and new operating systems, tools they could use to tell their own narratives.”

The lingering absence

For Cora, the loss is most acute in the everyday details. What she misses most, she said, is James’s meticulousness. “He always wanted things in order—clothes grouped by color, hangers neatly aligned, long sleeves separate from short sleeves.”

James was also her guide in navigating the risks of technology and surveillance. “He had the patience to explain things to me. Now that he has disappeared, I have to figure things out on my own,” Cora said.

Still, she clings to the small rituals that once bound their family together. When their daughter was little, she and James often made a simple no-bake cake: crumbled pastries layered with cream and mango. Both had a sweet tooth, Cora recalled, and those colorful moments remain among her most cherished memories.

Not only was he a good husband but also a determined father. James never failed to provide emotional support for Cora and their daughter. When his daughter was about to take the medical licensure exam, James never wavered in reminding her that she will pass. Then fortunately, she passed.

James and his daughter have more in common, said Cora. Both of them have a fascination for reading, navigating technology, and even watching science fiction movies. Cora funnily remembered, “There was a moment when we went together to watch in the cinema. They enjoyed the movie but I fell asleep.”

Carrying on

Cora appealed to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) Region V to reconsider and set aside its earlier resolution which states that the case be “closed without prejudice to reopening,” and that “there is no reliable evidence” pertaining to alleged abduction and disappearance of James.

“They told us that we cannot ascertain that James is missing so we filed a supplemental motion for reconsideration,” Cora said. She also underscored that the 902nd Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army tagged her and James as members of terrorist organizations, extending it to the organizations they are working with.

Now retired, Cora dedicated nearly eleven years to the Citizens’ Disaster Response Center, a non-government organization that pioneered and continues to promote community-based disaster management in the Philippines.

“The only thing that gives us strength is the hope that they are okay and the continuation of their advocacies. We know they dedicated their lives to their work, and the least we can do is to continue the work for them,” Cora said. “Enforced disappearance should never happen, for any reason at all—this is something you wouldn’t wish even on your worst enemies.” (DAA)