Rights
groups held a protest action in front of the Manila Regional Trial Court today in time for the clarificatory hearing on the
multiple murder case filed against former Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo and
peace consultants Randall Echanis,
Rafael Baylosis, Vicente Ladlad, and recently arrested Benito
Tiamzon and Wilma Austria. All are consultants of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in the peace negotiation with the GPH.
Rights
groups held a protest action in front of the Manila Regional Trial Court today in time for the clarificatory hearing on the
multiple murder case filed against former Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo and
peace consultants Randall Echanis,
Rafael Baylosis, Vicente Ladlad, and recently arrested Benito
Tiamzon and Wilma Austria. All are consultants of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in the peace negotiation with the GPH.
“The
revival of trumped up charges against Ocampo and the peace consultants
signals the intensification of political persecution under the Aquino
administration. These charges were hatched under Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s Inter-Agency Legal Action Group (IALAG). United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston considered the IALAG as a way of prosecuting and punishing “enemies of the state,“ said Cristina
Palabay, Karapatan secretary general.
Palabay
said despite the abolition of the IALAG, due to extensive campaign of human
rights groups and the international community, the policy and practice of
filing trumped-up criminalized charges continues under the Aquino government.
Karapatan
has documented 570 cases of illegal arrests and detention from June 2010 to
December 2013. The group also documented 427 political prisoners, as of
December 2013, including 152 persons arrested under Aquino’s term. Palabay
added that almost all of cases, like those of detained NDFP consultants, are
criminal charges spuriously filed based on highly questionable evidence and
fabricated testimonies.
“Leaders of people’s organizations in Negros, for
instance, are constantly threatened with fabricated criminal charges of the AFP
and the PNP. Under the Aquino government, the assault on political
dissenters through the filing of trumped-up charges is on the rise. In an attempt to silence opposition, they make up
all sort of charges using the wildest of their imagination,” Palabay said.
Organization
of ex-political detainees SELDA (Samahan ng Ex-Detainees Laban sa Detensyon at
Aresto), of which Ocampo is board member, also condemned the revival of charges
against Ocampo and consultants who are performing tasks in the peace negotiation on
the side of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.
“How
the police and military have arrested, demonized and dealt with the latest
political prisoners Benito Tiamzon, Wilma Austria and their five companions,
and the arrest of the late Ka Roger Rosal’s daughter, is vintage martial law
practice. The “planting” of evidence has been a
long-standing practice of the police and military, extensively used during the
Martial Law period. They use this to justify illegal arrests and
detention. They also exploit the use of John and Jane Does, even aliases,
to charge anyone as respondents to a case,” Bonifacio Ilagan, vice chairperson
of SELDA, said.
Ilagan, who was imprisoned during the Martial
Law years, recalled “As early as the 1970s, I remember being accosted with
fellow activists after a rally, brought to the police precinct at UN Avenue and
slapped with illegal possession of explosives, even if we only carried banners
and streamers.”
“Circumstances
of arrests and detention are highly anomalous, and the so-called evidences
improbable,” said Ilagan, “human rights lawyers call the circumstances cited in
trumped-up charges as beyond human experience, like soldiers’
testimonies that they identified the respondents by virtue of seeing their
faces in alleged military encounters.”
Karapatan
and SELDA joined calls to free all political prisoners, and demanded that the
Aquino government stop filing trumped-up charges.
“Trumped-up
charges are obviously meant to stifle the freedom of movement of political
dissenters. This is the bigger crime. The Aquino government should stop
silencing its critics, or his regime is bound to face bigger protests for
violating human rights here and there,” Palabay ended. ###