HER father was arrested by policemen 28 years ago.
Since then, Jimmylisa Badayos never had the head of their family back.
“It’s so painful to not have him again. It’s totally different to see even his dead body,” said Badayos who was 13 years old when her father was taken away from them.
At least 20 people whose loved ones were abducted and never found gathered outside the Redemptorist Church in Cebu City on Thursday to pray for them in observance of All Saints’ Day.
They lit candles at the marker that reminds people of Fr. Rudy Romano, a Redemptorist priest, who was abducted in Cebu on July 11, 1985.
Those who were forcibly disappeared in the dark days of the dictatorship were known as the “desaparecidos.”
While her father disappeared years after Martial Law, Badayos believed the government still had a hand in the former’s abduction.
She said her father, a labor organizer, was arrested in 1990 based on “trumped-up charges.”
They were later informed by the police that her father escaped.
“Since then, my father has not returned,” Badayos said.
Since they have no body to visit, she said she and other families of those who disappeared decided to gather at the church to pray and light candles.
The Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearance (FIND) had documented 1,838 cases of enforced disappearances since the Marcos regime.
Of this number, 1,147 are still missing, 435 have surfaced alive, and 256 were found dead.