Dear colleagues,
We are releasing this statement regarding the fasting of political prisoners in Negros for the resumption of the peacetalks between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.
KARAPATAN Public Information Desk
Negros political prisoners call for peacetalks resumption, to fast on December 10
This coming December 10, International Human Rights Day, political prisoners in Negros Island Region (NIR) will hold a one-day fast to call on the Marcos Jr. government to make good its promise to resume formal peacetalks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).
At present, there are 113 political prisoners — or 15% of the 755 national total — detained in various jails run by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) in the island region. Fifty-nine of them are in Negros Occidental (mostly at the Negros Occidental District Jail Male and Female dormitories in Bago City), while 54 are in Negros Oriental (mostly at the Guihulngan City District Jail).
To recall, representatives of the GRP and NDFP signed a Joint Communique on November 23 of last year in Oslo, Norway, with the Royal Norwegian Government acting as Third Party Facilitator, in order to “address…and resolve the reasons for the armed conflict.”
The political prisoners said that it is high time for the Marcos Jr. administration to resume the GRP-NDF formal peace talks, given the worsening political, economic and sovereignty-related issues plaguing the country.
The problems of grave corruption and human rights violations, widespread poverty and unemployment, and the serious tension at the West Philippine Sea, are better addressed, as what the GRP-NDFP Joint Communique said, “as one nation,” in order to achieve “the relevant socio-economic and political reforms towards a just and lasting peace.”
The NIR political prisoners also call on the Marcos Jr. government to immediately release 97 political prisoners nationwide who are sickly, as well as 103 others who are elderly.
Being arrested on the bases of red-tagging, terrorist-listing, planted evidence and fabricated testimonies is bad enough. Being deprived of release on humanitarian grounds makes it even worse, considering the overcrowding and substandard conditions in Philippine prisons, they emphasized.
There have been eight deaths of political prisoners since Marcos Jr. came to power, the most recent of whom was that of Ernesto Jude Rimando, who died of liver cancer just last July 23, they added.
There is therefore an urgent need for the current regime to improve the conditions of political prisoners and other Persons Deprived of Liberty or PDLs) that run counter to the spirit and intent of the 2015 United Nations Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, otherwise known as the Nelson Mandela Rules, they said.
In general, political prisoners and other PDLs are treated as if their imprisonment has automatically stripped them of some of their most basic constitutional rights as accused persons, the political prisoners emphasized.
For example, political prisoners and other PDLs in one Negros Oriental jail are being padlocked inside their congested cells 24 hours a day, granted only a 30-minute morning sun exposure once every two weeks and allowed only a few minutes every two weeks to contact their families and legal counsel, they said.
In another jail, there are political prisoners whose cases remain unresolved after 16 years of unjust imprisonment based on trumped-up politically motivated charges, they added.
These and many other acts of commission and omission of the Marcos Jr. government definitely constitute serious violations of domestic and international standards, the political prisoners concluded.