The men arrived at the house around 2am and rapped on the door. Inside were two female students who had travelled to the house in northern Luzon to work as volunteers for a farmers' rights organisation. One, Sherlyn Cadapan, an athlete and varsity scholar, was midway through a bachelor degree in sports at the University of the Philippines Diliman in Manila. Her friend Karen Empeno was working on her sociology thesis on agrarian communities in Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines.
The knocking woke up the neighbours in the village of San Miguel. One, a young boy who is now in hiding, saw what happened next: a group of armed men dragged the women out of the house and bundled them into a jeepney together with a local farmer, Manuel Merino. None have been seen since.
Erlinda Cadapan says she has no doubt it was the Philippine military that abducted her daughter Sherlyn, whose 30th birthday was one week ago. Last year, Mrs Cadapan filed a joint habeas corpus writ in the Supreme Court against the army chief of staff and several senior officers in the northern Luzon command whom she suspects of involvement in the disappearance.
But despite the legal challenge and public appeals from university officials, Sherlyn Cadapan hasn't surfaced since the night of June 26, leading her mother to fear the worst. 'I'm so worried, I feel something has happened. I hope she's not dead, maybe only tortured. I hope she's still alive,' Mrs Cadapan said.
If not, Sherlyn Cadapan would join a list of several hundred suspected political killings in the Philippines, a tally that has soared since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took office in 2001. The outcry over the killings, and foot-dragging by an administration stacked with military officers, has shone a spotlight on a dirty war being played out across the nation.
Human rights groups say that political activists, unionists, farmers, lawyers, human rights workers and churchmen have been slain in what appears to be a systematic campaign to silence anyone tagged as loyal to the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). About half the victims were members of legal leftist parties that Mrs Arroyo's security chiefs have repeatedly labelled as communist fronts that are in league with the CPP's armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA).