Burgos' mom disappointed by SC order on kidnap case
“Will this be a new start of going around in circles again?" This was how Edita Burgos, mother of missing activist Jonas Burgos, expressed her disappointment over the Supreme Court’s resolution ordering the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to conduct a “comprehensive" probe on her son’s disappearance. Mrs. Burgos said she was “very sad" that more than two years after her son was abducted by men believed to be military personnel in Quezon City, the high court only ordered the case to be brought back to where she first brought it. “We started our search for Jonas by seeking the help of the CHR where the investigation was unceremoniously closed when I was unjustly accused of being uncooperative… And now you are asking us to go back to the CHR?" she said Wednesday in a letter to the Supreme Court, a copy of which was furnished to the media. “We have prayed and waited for almost two years, and all we got was an instruction from our revered magistrates for the CHR to investigate the case extensively. Did it have to take so long for the Supreme Court to find out that the investigators made serious lapses?" she added in the letter. The SC on Tuesday directed the CHR to extensively probe on Jonas’ disappearance after it found out that the military and the police “failed" to “meaningfully" investigate the incident. Burgos, son of the late freedom fighter Jose Burgos, was abducted April 28, 2007 allegedly by military personnel while he was having lunch at a restaurant inside Ever Gotesco Mall in Commonwealth Avenue, Quezon City. Mrs. Burgos said the SC’s move was only a means of “passing the burden on another institution" and questioned the amount of time the high court took to realize the “lapses" in the investigation, which she described as “efforts to cover up the identity of the perpetrators." “The smallest ray of hope to find my son Jonas, pinned on the highest court of the land, but it has just been shattered. I hope that this is not an omen of things to come for all other cases of human rights violations," she said. Despite disappointment on the SC order, Mrs. Burgos said her “search for truth" on what happened to her son will not end until she attains justice. - KBK, GMANews.TV