Manila  - More than a year after escaping his military captors, Raymond Manalo still has nightmares about gushing water pummelling his face, combat boots cracking his ribs and the dark cage-like room where he was chained for more than a month.

"I did not expect to live a minute longer," the 28-year-old farmer told Deutsche Press-Agentur, dpa, recalling his 18-month captivity in various military camps in the Philippines. "The pain is numbing, but the numbness was only a prelude to more pain."

Manalo and his brother Reynaldo, 38, were among more than 200 victims of forced disappearances under the administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo since
2001.

Leftist groups have blamed the military for most of the disappearances, alleging that the kidnapping was part of the armed forces' campaign to crush the communist insurgency and to silence political activists and their supporters.

"We are lucky to come out alive," Raymond said. "During our captivity we met several more captives but after a few days or weeks they were led away and we never saw them again. We heard gunshots and then saw fires in the middle of the night."

Raymond said that among the still-missing activists they met and lived with for about two months were university students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno who were abducted by armed men on June 26, 2006.

He said he could still hear the screams of the two students while their captors tortured them a few feet away from the hut he and his brother were kept in.

"They poked sticks on the most sensitive parts of their bodies. They punched them. They burned them with cigarettes. They gave them water-hose treatment," Raymond recalled. "I didn't see them again after June 2007. Maybe they are already dead."

While the military has denied the brothers were ever in their custody, the Philippines Court of Appeals issued a writ protecting the Manalos from detention and arrest by government forces one week after their escape in August 2007.

Under the writ, the military and the defence department were also ordered to investigate and provide information about the whereabouts of army officers and militiamen the Manalo brothers named as among their captors and torturers.

The Supreme Court has upheld the Court of Appeals decision.

The brothers said they were farmers without any political leaning prior to their abductions. Their only link to the communist movement was a brother, whom they have not seen or heard from for years.

Raymond said he would never forget February 14, 2006, when a stabbing pain jolted him from his siesta at the family home in San Ildefonso town in Bulacan province, 55 kilometres north of Manila.

Before he could make sense of what was happening, armed men led him away from his house blindfolded. Along the way he heard his brother, Reynaldo, screaming as he was also forcibly taken.

For the next six weeks, the two brothers became human punching bags, taking blows from combat boots and wooden paddles which were sometimes smouldering. Their feet and hands were chained as their captors used cigarettes and scorching cans to burn their skin.

Their captors wanted them to admit being members of the New People's Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. They also wanted them to help locate their brother, named Bestre, who was a guerrilla.

"With the pain we experienced every minute of the day we admitted to all the crimes they wanted us to admit," said Raymond, whose only dream in life was to have bountiful rice and vegetable harvests. "My brother admitted to killing 12 policemen and soldiers."

One night in March 2006, after hearing their captors talking about killing them, Raymond squeezed himself through a small window in his detention cell and made a dash to freedom.

For hours he wandered in the wilderness, fording streams and trekking valleys. When he reached an asphalt road he met a few people who told him he came from Fort Magsasay, a sprawling army camp in the northern province of Nueva Ecija.

"That was when I knew the military was holding us," he said.

Soldiers eventually caught him and the beatings began again.

Due to his failed escape, Raymond and his brother were placed in a cage-like room, with chains on their feet, hands and waists attached to a concrete post on one end. They were fed spoiled food and forced to drink their own urine.

The beatings only stopped after they promised to Major General Jovito Palparan, then the regional military chief, during a meeting that they will cooperate with the armed forces.

Palparan, who has since retired, is known in the leftist world as "The Butcher" for allegedly masterminding the extra-judicial killings of dozens of left-wing activists and supporters. He has repeatedly denied the allegations.

For the next several months the brothers were transferred from one army camp to another and were made slaves - cooking, washing dishes and soldiers' clothes, sweeping the camp and doing errands.

Opportunity for escape came in August 2007 when the captors brought them to a farm in the northern province of Pangasinan, to help plant rice. One night when their guards were asleep after a day-long drinking spree, they finally attained freedom. (dpa)