It is four years to the day since Zara Alvarez was gunned down in Bacolod City, the 13th human rights worker from Karapatan to have been killed under the Duterte regime.
A fierce and dedicated human rights worker, Zara had been jailed on trumped-up charges which were eventually dismissed, red-tagged by a vigilante group with links to the military, terror-tagged by the Department of Justice and vilified by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) even after her death.
A police task force investigation into Zara’s death and a separate probe by the Commission on Human Rights have turned up nothing, operating under a hostile political climate. Four years after, even with a new regime in place, there has been no justice for Zara and for the hundreds of other victims of extrajudicial killings under Duterte, nor for the tens of thousands killed in Duterte’s anti-drug war.
In fact, even after the Supreme Court recognized the link between being red-tagged and being subjected to graver human rights violations such as extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, and illegal arrest and detention on trumped-up charges, securing protective writs from the courts is still an uphill battle, as proven by the Court of Appeals’ swift denial of the petition for the privilege of the writs of amparo and habeas data by KARAPATAN, with Alvarez as among those who were supposed to testify. Years after the killing of Zara, the Supreme Court has yet to release its decision on KARAPATAN’s petition for review on certiorari regarding KARAPATAN’s plea for legal protection.
This lack of trust and confidence on domestic redress mechanisms and the prevailing climate of impunity are apparent in the CA’s quizzical denial of the petition for legal protection for Jonila Castro and Jhed Tamano, environmental activists who had both been red-tagged and abducted and tortured in military camps and safehouses for 17 days before managing to turn the tables on their captors.
This continuing hostility can only be expected under Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Duterte’s successor, who is himself accountable for 105 extrajudicial killings in the context of his counter-insurgency war, in addition to 75 other victims who survived attempts on their lives.
No matter how long it takes, KARAPATAN and others in the broad community of human rights defenders will not relent in their efforts to attain justice for Zara and all other victims of extrajudicial killings under Duterte and beyond and exact accountability from the perpetrators, including the masterminds.