Sen. Alan Cayetano’s reference to detained senators Jinggoy Estrada and Rodante Marcoleta as “political prisoners” is a grave insult to the 560 political prisoners and scores of former political prisoners, who have been persecuted by the State to deter them and their communities from exercising their rights and practicing their socio-political beliefs.
Excuse me, Sen. Cayetano, but plunderers cannot be considered as such because they are simply crooks in authority and mercenaries of their political patrons. They steal from public funds, live in luxury at the behest of the people’s poverty, and when made accountable for their crimes, they use their political capital to affirm the double standard of justice in the country.
As a former political prisoner, I know too well what political persecution looks like. I was a peasant organizer who was arbitrarily arrested, in the dead of the night, while caring for my months old child during the Duterte administration. Evidence was planted against me, lies of soldiers and police were stacked against me in court, and five years in prison sought to diminish my spirit in fighting for peasants’ rights. Months before I was arrested on trumped up charges, my father, former political prisoner and peace consultant Randall Echanis, was brutally killed by State forces. I find your political patron, Duterte, responsible for these transgressions.
Even upon my release, the red-tagging and attacks against me did not stop. The Marcos administration continued Duterte’s policies and ways through the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). Many of my fellow organizers in Cagayan Valley are facing trumped up cases based on counterterrorism legislation that you and your colleagues in the Senate supported and passed. Soldiers remain encamped in peasant communities, terrorizing the residents and commiting violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.
This is what political persecution looks like, Senator Cayetano – nowhere near the situation of Estrada and Marcoleta.
Your defense of your political patron Sara Duterte in the impeachment trial, using the language of human rights and distorting the principles in the process, is a nauseating and disgusting act of convenience for people like you. You justified the slaughter of poor Filipinos during the Duterte administration, just as you and your sister are bending backwards in justifying the plunder of our country’s coffers. Shame on you, Senator Cayetano.
It is because of political animals like you, that I continue my work as a peasant advocate working for the release of the unjustly imprisoned farmers and individuals. I want to build a just and humane society where my child, the infant who was with me when I was arrested, will no longer be subjected to a status quo which is only beneficial for you and your class.