The wholesale delisting of enforced disappearance cases is sweeping under the rug the ultimate truth about the victims’ fate and ensures their violators’ impunity.

This will be the result of the government’s efforts to delist 625 cases of involuntary disappearance from the records of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance.

It is a double atrocity for a victim to be involuntarily disappeared and his case, while pending solution, is delisted, according to Rep. Edcel C. Lagman, the Honorary Chairperson of the Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearance (FIND).

This sinister initiative of the Presidential Human Rights Committee under the Office of the President does not disclose to the public the victims and perpetrators involved in the cases sought to be delisted.

The purging of the records does not have the prior knowledge of the Commission on Human Rights, concerned human rights groups, and the relatives of the victims.

The length of the disappearance is not a reason for the delisting because the act constituting enforced disappearance is a continuing offense and does not prescribe pursuant to R.A. No. 10353 or the “Anti-Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance Act of 2012″, the first statute of its kind in Asia.

The payment of compensation to victims does not foreclose investigation, prosecution and conviction of culprits because the exemption or pardon of the violators is not addressed under R.A. No. 10368 or the "Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013″.

Lagman is the principal author of both R.A. No. 10353 and R.A. No. 10368.

EDCEL C. LAGMAN