Human Rights Online Philippines

This is an excerpt from the article “Rose” by Jan Joy Louise Crismo, published in the The Voice, December 2019 issue (an AFAD publication). Rose is the sister of the Acebedo Brothers who were forcibly disappeared during the dark times of Philippine Martial Law of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos (1972-1981).

“Rose is the third and only girl among the four Acebedo siblings. She used to be an organizer in the anti-martial law movement along with her older brothers, Roy and Nolito, and their youngest brother, Boyet.”

“In 1975, her older brothers went to Mindanao to work fulltime as peasant organizers. A few months after arriving there, they were forcibly disappeared on separate incidents. Roy was captured when soldiers raided a house where he was attending a meeting and was later killed, while Nolito was killed by military men as he was on his way to another town. The brothers’ bodies were never found. Years later, her youngest brother went to Mindanao to confirm the veracity of their brothers’ disappearance. In 1985, he was also killed.”

“Rose always thought of her brothers, especially when the youngest one died. ‘It seemed scary. I felt that I was fighting against the world alone,’ she says.”

“To this day, Rose finds it very difficult to talk about her brothers’ fate. Once she was asked to share her family’s experiences during Martial Law. ‘My blood pressure shot up and I was rushed to the infirmary; it would not go down until after two days,’ she recalls. “

In the picture is Roy Lorenzo Acebedo

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