KARAPATAN welcomes the Court of Appeals decision granting the privileges of the writs of amparo and habeas data in favor of the daughters of Felix Salaveria Jr., an indigenous people’s activist and cycling advocate who was abducted on August 28, 2024 and has been missing since then.
The decision of the Former Thirteenth Division of the CA was promulgated on July 21, 2025, seven months after the petition was filed. KARAPATAN has been assisting the families of Salaveria and James Jazmines, a freelance IT consultant and former public information officer of Kilusang Mayo Uno who was likewise abducted and disappeared five days before Salaveria.
According to the CA decision, “for failing to exercise extraordinary diligence in preventing the violation of enforced disappearance, investigating the case, securing evidence, and identifying the perpetrators,” current Philippine National Police Chief Gen. Nicolas D. Torre III, former Director of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, and Bicol-based police officials are responsible and accountable in the enforced disappearance of Salaveria.
KARAPATAN said that it was Salaveria who first reported the enforced disappearance of James Jazmines, his fellow cycling enthusiast, on August 26, 2024, three days after not getting responses to his SMS messages from Jazmines. James joined the birthday dinner for Felix on the night of August 23, 2024.
KARAPATAN contacted its Bicol chapter to inform them about the abduction and coordinate with them on a quick reaction and search mission. KARAPATAN dispatched its paralegals to join the team on August 27, 2024 along with James’ wife Corazon and began the search on the morning of August 28 based on Salaveria’s information and with the help of Karapatan-Bicol and Altermidya. After being informed of Salaveria’s abduction on the afternoon of August 28, the mission team members approached police officials and local government authorities to search for both James and Felix. KARAPATAN conducted two additional missions in Tabaco, Albay after the initial quick reaction and search mission.
We noted the foot-dragging of police officials approached by the mission members and families since the abductions and disappearances of Jazmines and Salaveria. This has always been characteristic of the PNP’s approach whenever enforced disappearances or other human rights violations were reported to their offices.
Similarly, undue delays in court decisions, including that of the Supreme Court’s action on the petition for the writ of amparo and habeas data filed by Jazmines’ wife regarding his enforced disappearance, are factors in the failure to promptly investigate cases of enforced disappearance and to surface the victims.
Faced with the repeated failure of redress mechanisms despite the enactment of the Anti-Enforced Disappearance Law, we ask – where will families of desaparecidos go to see their loved ones again and seek justice?
We assert that there has always been a method to the madness of enforced disappearances and other human rights violations. These are deliberate, cruel, and unjust methods that are maintained by an infrastructure of impunity that is prevalent up to the Marcos Jr. regime. The fact that Marcos Jr.’s State of the Nation Address failed to even acknowledge the crime of enforced disappearance under his administration is proof that the regime either tolerates and is complicit in, or is the primary perpetrator of, the enforced disappearances of 15 persons, including Jazmines and Salaveria, under its watch.
As we call for the immediate implementation of the CA’s orders to concerned government offices on the case of Felix Salaveria, we press for immediate court action on the case of James Jazmines and other desaparecidos.
We call on Congress to conduct oversight hearings to look into the root causes of the non-implementation of the Anti-Enforced Disappearance Law and to ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
We are in solidarity with the families of the disappeared in their hope and struggle to find their loved ones. We remain resolute in demanding accountability and seeking justice for all victims of enforced disappearance.
