Rights group Karapatan condemned the abduction and continued arbitrary detention of a Bicolano youth by suspected State security forces, in a bid to pressure the victim’s father to surrender.
According to reports from Karapatan-Bicol, Gerald Gestole, 24, and his brother Leo, had just gotten off a public utility vehicle in Barangay Chrysanthemum, San Pedro, Laguna on November 17, 2024, when an unidentified man suddenly grabbed the victim and forced him inside a white L300 van. Leo struggled with the man to help his brother escape but they were outnumbered by three other men who eventually dragged Gerald inside the vehicle.
“Gestole was abducted in a manner similar to the seizure of other victims whose assailants were State security agents,” said Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay. “What is more alarming, however, is the palit-ulo scheme that is apparently at work here,” she added.
According to reports, Gestole’s mother, Geraldine received a phone call a few hours after her son was abducted. She was surprised to hear the voice of her missing son, who allegedly said they should no longer look for him, and that he was taken by so-called “rebel returnees.”
The voice on the other line, however, also insisted that Gestole’s father should surrender to the police. The family later learned that Gestole’s father is facing multiple cases filed by the 22nd Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army in the province of Sorsogon in October 2024.
“We decry this obvious palit-ulo modus by the military and the police,” said Palabay. Palit-ulo, the practice of arresting and charging family members instead when the police fail to apprehend a suspect, became notorious under Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war as a means of pressuring suspects to surrender and padding rates of arrests and convictions.
Also, according to Karapatan-Bicol, the police, after volunteering to send home the victim’s brother and mother who went to the San Pedro police station to file a blotter report, entered the Gestole home and randomly searched their belongings for the alleged presence of illegal firearms and explosives.
“The police were treating the victims’ kin as suspects, despite their claims of facing a blank wall regarding Gestole’s abduction,” Palabay pointed out.
“Gestole’s abduction, and the threats and harassment against his family, only add to the long list of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law perpetrated by the Marcos Jr. regime,” Palabay said. “We demand that the authorities surface Gestole and allow him to reunite with his family,” she added. “We also demand a stop to the nefarious palit-ulo scheme.”