The beatings one year ago have left her with a bad shoulder.
The metal handcuffs have left bracelet-like marks on her hands.
The anguish of surviving where many have died gives her harrowing nights.
But Melissa Roxas considers herself lucky.
She lived to talk about the men who abducted and tortured her, unlike the estimated 1,000 people in her country who have been victims of political killings over the past decade.
This week, Roxas, a human rights advocate, brings her story to Vancouver as part of her Canadian tour with the creators of the Filipino film Dukot! (Abduct!) to raise awareness of extra-judicial arrest, torture and execution in the Philippines.
The event is being held as Filipino-Canadians celebrate the 112th Philippines Independence Day.
The film Dukot is based on true stories gleaned from over 200 cases of enforced disappearances and more than 1,000 cases of extrajudicial killings that have been documented in the Philippines since 2001.
Melissa, a native of Manila, arrived in the US in 1986, when she was just nine years old.
After completing her studies including a Bachelor of Science in Animal Physiology and Neuroscience and, a BA in Third World Studies, Roxas began volunteering for community organizations advocating the rights of the youth, the homeless and the elderly. 
As the budding activist learned more about her native land her desire to return and help increased. Melissa was among the organizers of a Bayan-USA contingent to the International Solidarity Mission (ISM) to the Philippines, a fact-finding mission that investigated the rampant human-rights violations, particularly the extrajudicial killings.
Last April, she decided to go back to the Philippines, this time as a full-time activist doing human rights and community health work.
On May 19, 2009 while taking part in a survey of several communities in La Paz, Tarlac, for a future medical mission, she was abducted together with two companions, Juanito Carabeo and John Edward Jandoc, by about 15 men in civilian clothes but wearing bonnets and ski masks and bearing long firearms. They were brought to a barracks, where they were repeatedly tortured for days.
Melissa, in particular, was called “Maita” several times and warned that there was nothing the “Canadian government” could do for her while she was being tortured.
She and her fellow human rights campaigners believe the kidnappers were members of the Philippines Armed Forces, looking for communist rebels. Roxas said that she was told by her interrogators that she was abducted because she was a member of the outlawed New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
In her published testimony Roxas said she was “ was blindfolded and handcuffed.... beaten, suffocated and slapped.”
“They had plastic bags over my head repeatedly. They threatened me. They banged my head against the wall till I lost consciousness. At one point, they were putting things in my food... I thought they were going to kill me,” said the human rights advocate.
Six days after she was abducted, she was told she was being transferred to another facility.
 “I was preparing to die.”
But she was dropped off afters some intense lobbying by human rights groups and American officials.
Migrante International, a Philippines-based group believes that the target of Roxas’s abductors may have been its former secretary general Maita Santiago, of Vancouver.
Santiago who works with Filipino-Canadian NDP Vancouver-Kensington MLA Mable Elmore also ran for a seat in Vancouver city council in 1993, on a slate that was led by now NDP Vancouver East MP Libby Davies.
Santiago was the secretary general of the Labour group Migrante in Manila from 2002 to 2008 before returning to Vancouver.
Roxas and her two companions were released about a week later on the condition that they would not speak in public about what was done to them.
But speak out she did.
Roxas has issued a number of statements exposing the violations of her and her companions’ rights, and is set to do more in Vancouver this week.
“One year after Melissa’s ordeal, she is still suffering from both physical and psychological trauma from the abuse she endured while in illegal detention,” states Kuusela Hilo of the Justice for Melissa Roxas Campaign.
“Yet not one arrest has been made for the abduction of Melissa Roxas and her companions until now.”
Angelina Maranan-Claver of The DUKOT(Desaparecidos) Film Tour Organizing Committee in Vancouver  which has brought Roxas to speak about her horrors said that although the recently concluded May 2010 National Elections saw a change in personalities, there is much to be desired in the dispensation of justice, and in the recognition of human rights and dignity of all. 
Bonifacio P. Ilagan, who wrote the film directed by Joel C. Lamangan, says it “could very well be the first full-length film to deal squarely with the current phenomenon of human rights violations in the Philippines.”
Meanwhile, a human rights group is challenging outgoing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to make the most of her remaining days in office to improve the human rights situation in the Philippines.
The appeal came after the Amnesty International released its 2009 annual global human rights report, which blamed the government for the continuing impunity in the Philippines, worsened by human rights violations committed both by the military and communist rebels.
The Amnesty International-Philippines, at press conference in Quezon City, likewise, challenged president-apparent Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III to set up a government that is centered on easing human rights violations in the country.

Dukot! Film Screenings and other events

Thursday, June 3, 2010 (6:30pm)
Friday, June 4, 2010 (6:30pm)
UBC ROBSON SQUARE
C-300 Theatre
800 Robson St., Vancouver, B.C.
Saturday, June 5, 2010 (6:30 p.m.)
Vancouver Public Library
ALMA VANDUSEN & PETER MCKAY ROOMS
350 West Georgia St., Vancouver, B.C.
 
*Tickets at $15 each. Public discussion follows each screening with our DUKOT guests: Dennis Evangelista (producer), Boni Ilagan (scriptwriter), Allen Dizon (the lead actor) and Melissa Roxas, a US-based artist and poet who survived her abduction and torture in the Philippines.

A Special Reception at the Legislature
with members of the Filipino community and the Dukot resource persons in attendance
Thursday, June 3, 11:00 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
Parliament Buildings, Victoria, B.C.

“Katarungan at Karapatan”
MLA Mable Elmore will host “Katarungan at Karapatan” (Justice and Human Rights), a Philippine Independence day activity, with the special participation of the DUKOT guests as resource persons.. As well, it will be a reception to honour the Filipino community’s contributions to B.C. The Opposition Caucus will also be present.
 
Art Beyond
Barriers- Art Petition for the Morong 43
Saturday, June 5, 10:00 a.m.-12:00 noon
Mable Elmore’s Constituency Office
6106 Fraser St., at E45th St., Vancouver, B.C.

Art Beyond Barriers is a Live Art Petition made through different forms of art: visual, music, voice, written word, spoken word, movement, and theater.  We invite concerned artists, communities, and human rights supporters to create art in the spirit of collaboration and in support for human rights. This is also an activity in support of the international campaign to free the detained 43 health workers (Morong 43) in the Philippines who continue to be held in detention. People do not need to be artists to participate and all ages are welcome.