A group of men widely thought to be an army "black squad" abducted Edita Burgos’s son while he ate lunch in a Manila shopping mall last year.

More than a year after the event, many believe Jonas Burgos is dead. His mother has heard from her own sources that Jonas was badly tortured but she refuses to accept that her son is dead. "It makes the search easier," she explained.

Across The Philippines, other parents adopt a similar stoic approach, said a news report from Manila.

Hundreds of activists have been shot dead or are suspected to have been abducted over the past seven years in what is viewed internationally as a "dirty war" by the army against groups it sees as fronts for a violent communist insurgency.

The number of killings, usually carried out during the day by masked men on motorbikes, has dropped since a UN report last year said the military was responsible for many of the shootings.

Amid conflicting reports, at least 33 people were allegedly victims of political killings in 2007, compared to at least 96 in 2006.

But the murders have continued and according to a local human rights organization, Karapatan, a another 13 have been killed this year and at least one activist was abducted.

Despite President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s assurances that her government would prosecute soldiers guilty of murder or abduction, no military personnel have been convicted and families of the disappeared have been given no help in finding their kin.

Erlinda Cadapan spends most of her time searching for her 31-year old daughter Sherlyn, who according to witnesses, was snatched around 2 a.m. from a house north of Manila where she was staying while doing research work on local farmers.

Sherlyn’s friend Karen Empeno was also taken. They have been missing for two years. Sherlyn, who planned to get married on her mother’s birthday in September 2006, was reportedly two months pregnant when she was abducted. "When I’m alone, at night, that’s when I cry. I think about how she’s doing now. What the perpetrators are doing to her," says her mother, who wrote a letter to Arroyo asking for help but didn’t get a reply.

Cadapan fears that her daughter has miscarried and says that witnesses who have escaped detention have told her that Sherlyn, a former sprinter, has been beaten, electrocuted and denied food. "It’s very painful to know that she is suffering at the hands of people who I expect to give protection to her and to us."

Cadapan says her daughter was an activist, not a communist rebel, and should be given a chance to prove that. "If they are suspicious of my daughter, why not bring it to court for due process?"

A military spokesman said the armed forces were taking steps to raise soldiers’ awareness about human rights and he denied the army had anything to do with the kidnappings.