By ANTHONY IAN CRUZ
Malaya
March 3, 3008
TEN months after the abduction of her son Jonas, Edith Burgos began a seven-city speaking tour in the US on Saturday to bring to Americans and Filipino-Americans her plight and those of other victims of human rights abuses under the Arroyo administration.
Burgos, widow of Malaya founding publisher and press freedom icon Joe Burgos, started her speaking tour in New York Saturday night (Sunday afternoon in Manila) in a benefit dinner sponsored by the NY Committee on Human Rights in the Philippines (NYCHRP).
While in New York, Mrs. Burgos is also set to hold a private meeting with UN special rapporteur Philip Alston whose report on his 2007 visit to the Philippines tagged the Armed Forces as perpetrator of most of the extrajudicial executions alleged by human rights watchdogs.