Last Seen:

March 14 1989.  

Manila
Paul Laranang Tapia, an AB-Economics student of Manuel L. Quezon University, was, at the same time, a member of the International Affairs Commission of the National Office of the League of Filipino Students (LFS), heading the Development Education Program Desk. He disappeared under mysterious circumstances on 14 March 1989. He was last seen around 8:30 that evening on board a jeepney en route to Plaza Lawton, Manila, lugging a large bag full of soiled clothes. He was to take another ride from Plaza Lawton going home to San Pedro, Laguna. He never reached home.

The whole week before he disappeared, Paul served as a full-time guide to an eight-member delegation of the Japan-Philippine Student Interchange Center (JPSIC). Their itinerary included visits to the provinces of Bataan and Zambales in Central Luzon. It was also in this duration that the Philippine military forces were conducting intelligence operations and crackdowns on peasant groups in the area, resulting in the arrests of over ten peasant organizers.

Earlier, on 14 March, Paul and some colleagues saw off the JPSIC delegation at the airport. Paul and his companions proceeded from the airport to the office of the Asian Students Association in Quezon City, where they stayed for about three hours. At around 8:30 in the evening of the same day, they boarded a jeepney together. His companions alighted in Lerma and Quiapo just before crossing the bridge going to Plaza Lawton, where Paul was to get down and never be seen again.

On 3 April, Luisa Tapia, Paul's mother, filed a report of her son's disappearance with the Chief of Police Investigation of the NBI-Laguna, who in turn referred her to the National Bureau of Investigation, Manila. Luisa also filed the same report with FIND and, together with two members of the LFS International Desk, had a meeting with its workers on 19 April.

On 20 April, Luisa, together with her other son, Peter, and Paul's friend Noel Mariano, went to the CIS Administration in Camp Crame to file a complaint regarding her son's disappearance. Assisting them were officer C/C Florentino and Administrative Officer P/Lt. Ernesto Vicera, INP. On that same day, they were able to check on the detainees with the NARCOM, the PC/INP Stockade, the CSG, Highway Patrol, Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig, Metro Manila, the MPF Jail extension, the RRIU, and the NARCOM Rehabilitation Center. They found no trace of Paul whatsoever.

Paul's disappearance caught the attention of various sectors, especially the student groups, here and abroad. Efforts to find him and to pressure the Philippine government to get into action to produce Paul were widely supported here and by different international organizations in Germany, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, Amsterdam, the USA, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, and Japan. Letters of support to Paul's family poured in from these organizations. They also sent letters to then President Corazon Aquino, then Defense Secretary Fidel Ramos, then AFP Chief Renato de Villa, and then Commission on Human Rights Chairperson Mary Concepcion Bautista urging them to take action on the case.

In a June 16, 1989 letter to LFS International Affairs Officer J. Aguinaldo Bans, William Angel, Social Affairs Officer of the United Nations at Vienna, suggested that a formal letter on Paul's disappearance case be sent to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, United Nations Office at Geneva.

In the same letter, Angel wrote that indeed, Paul's was "a horrible story of disappearance that has become all too common in the international student movement." This is very true. Paul Laranang Tapia is just one of the many students, among others, from the different sectors of society who, to this day, remain unaccounted for.

details about their circumstances.