It may be 2013, but the Philippines is stuck in an Orwellian 1984

End the impunity of Benigno S. Aquino III Presidency on enforced disappearances!

Despite President Aquino’s attempts to project himself as sensitive to the issues of desaparecidos, enforced disappearances continue with impunity under his government, and a notorious perpetrator has been able to evade an arrest warrant for more than 20 months.

Desaparecidos (Families of Desaparecidos for Justice), together with progressive legislators, worked hard to design the Anti-Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance Act of 2012. It was signed into law in December of last year. Yet, three additional citizens joined the list of enforced disappearances after the new law against enforced disappearances came into force in January this year.

As in Orwell’s book 1984, words mean their opposite. The international community should tolerate it no longer.

More forced disappearances

On 22 January 2013, in Labuan, Zamboanga City, Zamboanga del Sur, Muslim scholar Sheikh Bashier Mursalum was abducted by suspected state security agents. Witnesses said Mursalum’s car was first hit by an Adventure utility vehicle from which armed men got off and shot him. He was then forced inside the vehicle.

Mursalum is a Modeer (principal) of the Madrasa in Labuan and is well respected by the Muslim community in Zamboanga City. The Darul Iftah in Zamboanga supports the family in searching for Mursalum, who remains missing to date.

5 February 2013 — Balangas Anlamit of Davao del Norte, Mindanao, was resting with his daughter and sister-in-law while walking to gather abaca, their livelihood. Two soldiers came and pointed their rifles at him, the women fled, and watched Balangas being tied up and taken away. On 14 February the family took a writ of habeas corpus, but the 8^th Infantry Division denied it held Balangas.

21 August 2013 — Bryan Epa was seen at around 9:00 pm being beaten and forced into a police patrol car outside his house at Barangay (village) Salvacion, Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya. The next day the police denied he was in custody. Bryan Epa was identified by CAFGU (government militia) at an anti-mining barricade at Binuangan village on 19-20 August 2013. The barricades have successfully blocked exploration by Royalco, an Australian mining company.

Where is Palparan?

In December 2011, retired Major General Jovito Palparan went into hiding after he, along with three other military officials, were finally charged with kidnapping with serious illegal detention for the disappearance of students Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan. The two were abducted and disappeared in June 2006. Witnesses also confirm that a farmer, Manuel Merino, was abducted in the same incident. Palparan continues to brazenly evade the warrant for his arrest.

A heavy burden

The Filipino people carry this long legacy of loss, grief and injustice. It is high time that the global community takes effective action to help lift this burden.

Call for global solidarity

The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines stands with the families of the disappeared in their grief and anger, and salutes them for their organised struggle for justice through Desaparecidos-Philippines. We call on the international community – from grassroots communities to the United Nations Security Council – to stand in solidarity with them, and to end the impunity of the Philippines government for their cynical breach of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances.

Reference:
Canon Barry Naylor
Chairperson, Global Council, International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP)
Honorary President, Campaign for Human Rights in the Philippines-United Kingdom (CHRP-UK)
Office: +44 (0) 116 261 5371
Mobile: +44 (0) 775 785 3621

Website: www.humanrightsphilippines.net
Email address: inquire@humanrightsphilippines.net

Origin of International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances

Three years ago, on 21 December 2010, in the UN General Assembly expressed its deep concern at the increase in enforced or involuntary disappearances in various regions of the world. They passed Resolution 65/209 International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, and declared 30 August the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, to be observed beginning in 2011.

According to the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, proclaimed by the General Assembly in its resolution 47/133 of 18 December 1992 as a body of principles for all States, an enforced disappearance occurs when:

“persons are arrested, detained or abducted against their will or otherwise deprived of their liberty by officials of different branches or levels of Government, or by organized groups or private individuals acting on behalf of, or with the support, direct or indirect, consent or acquiescence of the Government, followed by a refusal to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the persons concerned or a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of their liberty, which places such persons outside the protection of the law.”

On the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances

Desaparecidos (Families of the Desaparecidos for Justice)

“Until when will we keep looking for the disappeared?” Lorena “Aya” Santos, a daughter of a desaparecido and Secretary General of the Families of the Desaparecidos for Justice asked.

“For years, we keep commemorating the International Day of the Disappeared to remember all the desaparecidos in the world, and to call to stop enforced disappearances. Regimes had passed, but enforced disappearances still exist while our missing loved ones have yet to be found,” Santos said.

“It is obvious that the elimination of the practice of enforced disappearance will not end under the Noynoy Aquino regime,” Santos lamented.

“All the indicators are here. Enforced disappearances continue, the government does not own up to its accountability, no perpetrator has been prosecuted or jailed, and human rights violators are promoted to higher posts. Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan remains free from prosecution and jail,” Santos said.

Palparan is responsible for the abduction, torture and disappearance of UP students Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan. In December 2011, a warrant of arrest was issued against him and his cohorts. With a 2-million peso bounty on his arrest, Palparan remains at large to this date.

Under the Aquino regime, 17 persons have fallen victim to enforced disappearance. The latest case of disappearance is that of Bryan Epa of Nueva Vizcaya, an anti-mining activist, who was abducted by Vizcaya police on the night of 21 August.

It is the first time that the Philippines is commemorating the International Day of the Disappeared with a law that criminalizes enforced disappearance. “But we, families of desaparecidos, have nothing to celebrate about,” Santos said.

“The law alone cannot put a stop on enforced disappearances as proven by the recent cases of disappearances; more so to surface the disappeared,” Santos pointed out.

“This law has so far served only as a mere token to appease our outrage; but nothing has really changed since its enactment,” Santos said.

“While Pres. Aquino desperately saves his administration on the issue of corruption and the pork barrel system through the Napoles ‘surrender’, he can not do the same to hide the evils of human rights violations in the Philippines,” Santos said.

The members of Families of Desaparecidos for Justice today held a program-teach in at the lobby of Palma Hall at the  University of the Philippines, Diliman, where disappeared Karen Empeño, Sherlyn Cadapan, and Leo Velasco were among its alumni. Poems were read, songs, dances, and other cultural numbers were performed in remembrance of the disappeared. At the steps of Palma Hall, rights defenders and families of desaparecidos mounted huge letters made of old clothes to form the word “SURFACE”.

Meanwhile, in Guatemala, a demonstration and a gathering of relatives were held as a tribute to the disappeared. The solidarity activities between the Families of Desaparecidos for Justice in the Philippines and the Fundacion Amancio Samuel Villatoro in Guatemala were agreed upon by both organizations during the International Conference for Human Rights and Peace in the Philippines in July 2013.

Both organizations jointly paid tribute to the desaparecidos and issued a joint statement where they scored the United States’ role in the use of enforced disappearance and other forms of human rights violations by various States to keep the US’s economic and political interests in both countries, and in other neo-colonial states in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

“Until when does a person stop searching for a disappeared loved one? The search for the actual missing body may eventually stop after years of not getting any clue. But the fire in the hearts of each yearning mother, daughter or son, wife or husband for justice will never die. The search for justice will not stop, until enforced disappearance is ended,” Santos concluded.

Reference:
Lorena “Aya” Santos
Secretary General, Desaparecidos
+639222962260
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PUBLIC INFORMATION DESK
publicinfo@karapatan.org
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Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights
2nd Flr. Erythrina Bldg., #1 Maaralin corner Matatag Sts., Central District
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Telefax: (+63 2) 4354146
Web: http://www.karapatan.org

KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties.  It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign.

A vindication of sorts but a travesty of justice nonetheless

National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers

The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), counsel for security guard Rolly Panesa who who was tagged by the military as a supposed top-ranking rebel leader, welcomed with sigh of relief the 27 August 2013 decision of the Court of Appeals finally granting after several months the petition for the issuance of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. Even as it comes belatedly, we commend the Decision for finally seeing through all the deliberate lies and clumsy fabrications of the military to justify the violation of his rights.

Rolly Panesa, an ordinary security guard for the longest time, was illegally arrested way back 5 October 2012 at a busy intersection in Quezon City, and detained by joint elements of the 2nd Infantry Division of the Philippine Army, led by Southern Luzon Commander Maj. General Alan Luga, and the Philippine National Police. He was severely tortured while the military cynically misidentified him for a certain “Benjamin Mendoza”, supposedly the secretary of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in Southern Luzon, with a reward of PhP 5.6 million.

At the same time, the NUPL laments the long drawn-out and tedious legal proceedings that Panesa had to undergo just to simply prove that he is not what the military says he was and despite overwhelming evidence to establish his identity. This includes multiple official identification cards and records issued by government agencies themselves, on top of incotrovertible testimonial evidence, in stark contrast to the self-serving, contrived, and ludicrous accounts of spurious witnesses for the military a.k.a. roving rebel retrunees. It does not give comfort that the Office of the Solicitor General was, wittingly or unwittingly, a party all throughout to the perpetuation of this gross injustice.

The NUPL pointed out that the poor fellow had to endure almost 11 months in detention while awating his deserved vindication. If there is any classic example of justice delayed and justice denied, this no doubt fits the bill.  Nothing indeed will bring him back all those times lost and the damage wrought on his reputation, not to mention the agony and ordeal he and his family went through.

The NUPL condemns the money-making scheme of the Department of National Defense and the Department of Interior and Local Government’s secret hit list as it is now again proven to be dubious.  Previously, a certain Olegario Sebas of Negros Oriental who was similarly arrested for purportedly being another rebel leader, was also ordered released by virtue of a habeas corpus petition.

The payment by the Armed Forces of the Philippines of handsome reward money to supposed informers for the capture of what it refers to as “terrorist personalities and communist leaders” is farcical, withal dangerous. Thus, the DND-DILG’s secret hit list must be scrapped totally and immediately as it has become the basis to arrest, detain, and torture people on false charges; or worse, disappeared or killed. In addition, those who concocted this not so bright idea should also be held accountable for misusing the people’s money to violate people rights.

We shall suppport our client’s longstanding plan to file countercharges against those who have practically destroyed his life beyond `repair as impunity shall simply continue if there is no accountability.

Reference:

Atty. Ephraim Cortez
Deputy Secretary General for Legal Services
+639175465798

Atty. Edre U. Olalia
Secretary General
+639175113373

National Secretariat
National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL)
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Telefax no.920-6660
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