Rights groups Hustisya and Karapatan firmly support the decision of massacre victims from Southern Tagalog to bring their case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) after failing to attain justice from Philippine courts.
Those who filed a complaint with the UNHRC are Rosenda Lemita, mother of fisherfolk organizer Ana Marie Lemita-Evangelista, and Liezl Asuncion, wife of trade union leader Manny Asuncion.
Asuncion, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan-Cavite coordinator, and activist Ana Marie Evangelista, who was slain with her husband Ariel, were among the nine individuals killed in the region-wide dragnet conducted by police and military elements in the early morning of March 7, 2021 in the provinces of Rizal, Batangas and Cavite. Now referred to as Bloody Sunday, the operations that targeted a total of 24 individuals through the use of spurious search warrants, also resulted in the arrests of six activists. The victims, most of them community-based organizers, had all been previously red-tagged, threatened or harassed before the Bloody Sunday incident.
Two days before the crackdown, then president Rodrigo Duterte infamously ordered the police and the military to “finish off” New People’s Army rebels and ignore human rights.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) deployed a team of prosecutors that conducted perfunctory investigations of the Bloody Sunday killings and, not surprisingly, ended up exonerating the perpetrators.
“This is the kind of ‘working justice system’ that we have in the country,” said Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay. “It is one that works to ensure impunity for the perpetrators of state-sponsored killings and deny justice to the victims.”
“With the utter failure of the Philippine justice system to give the victims their due, they have decided to file a complaint before the UNHRC, which monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which the Philippines is a state party,” explained Palabay. “The extrajudicial killings of Manny Asuncion, the Evangelistas and many others are grievous violations of the ICCPR, for which the Philippine government, as a state party, must be sanctioned and held accountable,” she said.
Meanwhile, Atty. VJ Topacio, son of slain National Democratic Front of the Philippines consultants Agaton Topacio and Eugenia Magpantay, called on the Quad committee of the House of Representatives to pursue investigations on the Duterte administration-sponsored extrajudicial killings of activists and peace consultants.
“The blood and money trail of the very same police coddled and ordered by Duterte to kill in the drug war lead to the extrajudicial killings of activists and peace consultants such as my parents. We ask the Quad committee to investigate former police officials Debold Sinas, Lito Patay, and Romeo Caramat, among others,” Topacio stated.
Families of victims of extrajudicial killings and other rights violations under the organization Hustisya in the counterinsurgency campaigns of both Duterte and Marcos Jr. gathered on Saturday, November 9, 2024, to write letters to House Speaker Martin Romualdez and the chairpersons of the Quad committee to ask that such killings be brought to fore, in continuing efforts to hold Duterte accountable.
Hustisya and Karapatan said they will be organizing activities towards International Human Rights Day on December 10, to press for justice and accountability of both Marcos and Duterte for the violations on human rights and International Humanitarian Law committed by their State forces.