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Filipino Rights Workers say to London and Oxford Conference: Impunity continues in PH, victimizes rights defenders while violators are scot-free

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Filipino Rights Workers say to London and Oxford Conference: Impunity continues in PH, victimizes rights defenders while violators are scot-free

News Release – International Notice for Fugitive Gen. Palparan – Filipino Rights Workers say to London and Oxford Conference: Impunity continues in PH, Victimizes rights defenders while Violators are Scot-free

“We leave unmolested those who set fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.” This was the statement recently at the Defending Human Rights Defender’s Conference of Atty. Edre Olalia, Secretary General of the NUPL, quoting playwright Sebastien Roch Nicholas Chamfort. The statement is an apt description to the continuing attacks against human rights defenders in the Philippines today.

The conference organized by the London-based Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, Amnesty International (UK) and the 19-country member European Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights (ELDHR) was held at the Amnesty International UK Human Rights Action Centre in London.

Atty. Olalia is an invited delegate to the conference together with Cristina Palabay, Spokesperson of the human rights watchdog Karapatan. They also spoke before a large public service union in UK and at the Oxford Philippine Society before Filipino “Oxonians” or students studying at the prestigious university.

“Human rights defenders work to protect and promote human rights and fundamental freedoms. Unfortunately, being a human rights defender in a country such as the Philippines fraught with a hideous human rights record means putting oneself in the line of fire, as rights violations which one seeks to oppose are heaped on the defender,” the paper read.

Under the administration of former President Gloria Arroyo, the human rights-group Karapatan reported to have 34 human rights workers extrajudicially killed and 68 involuntarily disappeared. On the other hand, eight human rights lawyers have been killed.

“Even with the privileged status they enjoy in Philippine society and with their mandate as officers of the courts of law, legal practitioners are not insulated from the rights violations that continue even with a new administration riding on the crest of promise for reforms,” Atty. Olalia added.

In the one and a half years of the present Aquino administration, there has been no let-up in the terror and violence especially against human rights defenders. With the government barely lifting a finger to end the climate of impunity, Karapatan has documented 67 victims of extrajudicial killings, 37 of whom are human rights defenders. Also, there are nine cases of enforced disappearances since July 2010.

“Defending human rights defenders is imperative as it ultimately meant defending the victims themselves and upholding human rights,” Atty. Olalia said.

Atty. Olalia said that ending the spate of killings, disappearances and other rights violations rests on the perseverance and struggle of the people’s movement, of which people’s lawyers and human rights workers are part of, and the solidarity of all peoples against tyranny.

“Human rights defenders may continue to face the perils in their line of work but it will never be enough to water down their passion in working for the causes that they believe in. Their idea is to sow terror and make us cow in fear. This we shall never allow,” Atty. Olalia quoted from the paper.

Meanwhile, Atty. Olalia informed the delegates from several European rights organizations, unions and prominent lawyers like Michael Mansfield and Gareth Pierce and lawyers’ groups, British media as well as key Members of Parliament of the House of Lords about the fugitive Gen. Jovito Palparan. He asked for support to call on the government to step up its efforts to arrest him and to be on the look-out for him should they find him somehow somewhere. Not a few delegates likened the case of Palparan to the case of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet who had evaded arrest and punishment for the longest time.

Olalia is presently in Dublin, Ireland and would travel to Geneva for the UN Human Rights Council session and then to Brussels for the Bureau meeting of the UN-accredited 90-country member International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) where he is expected to bring up these issues.#

Reference: Atty. Edre U. Olalia, NUPL Secretary General, +639175113373

Aquino’s disturbing indifference

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We at the Campaign for Human Rights in the Philippines in the United Kingdom are deeply concerned with the Philippine government’s seeming lack of interest on reported irregularities and rights abuses in the arrest and continued illegal detention of Filipino artist Ericson Acosta.

Acosta was arrested without warrant on Feb. 13, 2011 in San Jorge, Samar, in an upland militarized village where he was conducting research on the local human rights and environmental situation in the region. In his counter-affidavit, Acosta said he stayed in a military camp for three days where he was interrogated and tortured for 44 hours straight. He was charged with illegal possession of explosives to justify his illegal arrest. He is currently detained at the Calbayog sub-provincial jail, where troopers from the 8th Infantry Division of the Philippine Army has camped out within jail premises, thus keeping up the harassment and intimidation that Acosta, his family and visitors have been subjected to.

Acosta has complained about this and appealed his case directly to visiting local officers of the  Commission on Human Rights (PCHR) in the Eastern Visayas. These PCHR officials saw with their own eyes the highly irregular military deployment inside a civilian detention facility. However, the PCHR has not made any report public, and it has neither publicly condemned these rights abuses.

A petition for review which cites serious irregularities and rights abuses was filed by Acosta’s counsel, the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), before the Department of Justice in September 2011. Acosta’s complainants have failed to file any comment on this petition. Without such opposition, the review petition should have been resolved within 60 days. However, the DOJ has issued no resolution on the petition. The NUPL recently filed a motion for the immediate resolution of the petition.

No less than President Aquino’s spokesperson, Edwin Lacierda, has told local reporters that “there are no political prisoners” in the Philippines. When asked about government’s response to the plight of Acosta and some 350 other persons who are now in jail for their political beliefs, Lacierda could only reply with empty rhetoric. Government indifference to the plight of the detainees has caused very real suffering to them and their families.

We urge concerned Philippine authorities, especially DOJ officials, to act without delay on Acosta’s petition for review and to immediately release him. His rights continue to be violated each day he is kept in jail. The reported rights abuses and irregularities must be thoroughly investigated and acted upon.

Indeed, it is very disturbing to see that a government led by the son of a revered political prisoner and democracy icon has turned a blind eye to the plight of Ericson Acosta and political detainees in the Philippines.

—REV. CANON BARRY NAYLOR,honorary president, Campaign for Human Rights in the Philippines (CHRP-UK); urban canon and parish priest of the Abbey and Holy Spirit Ministries, Leicester (published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer
February 20th, 2012)

Suspicions about military’s involvement in Italian priest’s murder persist

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Suspicions about military’s involvement in Italian priest’s murder persist

DAVAO CITY—The verbal tussle between the military and groups seeking justice for slain Italian priest Father Fausto Tentorio has continued, four months after the priest was murdered and even after the arrest of Jimmy Ato, whose confession had somewhat cleared the military of responsibility for the murder.

In his affidavit submitted before the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) when he was arrested a few months ago, Ato said Tentorio was ordered killed by some landowners in Arakan, North Cotabato, who were hurting from the priest’s opposition to a hydropower plant project. The landowners were to gain from the project through compensation of their properties.

Italian priest Fr. Peter Geremia, a colleague of Tentorio at the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, said, however, that suspicions about the military’s involvement in the death of the priest in October have deepened when it was found out that military assets were posted inside the Arakan parish compound at the time of the killing.

He said the deployment of the military assets has to be explained.

Geremia said while the gunman was shooting Tentorio, who was preparing to leave the convent for a religious meeting in Kidapawan City, also in North Cotabato, soldiers participating in a bayanihan (community) activity in a school across the Arakan parish compound ignored the fact that someone had just been murdered.

He said he had written Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to look into these facts and to ask the military why the soldiers did not rush to the scene of the crime.

“Let those soldiers explain why they failed to respond or to track down the killer,” he said.

Colonel Leopoldo Galon, spokesman of the military’s Eastern Mindanao Command based here, did not comment on the supposed deployment of military assets inside the Arakan parish compound on the day Tentorio was killed.

But Galon said the soldiers participating at the bayanihan activity were equally surprised as everyone else.

The soldiers, he said, did not respond because there was no military officer in the area to command them at the time of the killing. Besides, he said it was not the soldiers’ duty to respond to a crime incident.

Galon said he could not understand why the military was being blamed for the murder of Tentorio when the arrested suspect had already identified the masterminds.

As this developed, Catholics under the Diocese of Kidapawan lighted candles and attended a Mass on the fourth month of Tentorio’s murder.
Fr. Pol Paracha, head of the Justice for Fr. Pop’s Movement in North Cotabato, said the candles would serve as reminder for their undying love and continued quest for justice for Tentorio’s death.

Paracha also hinted that they were not contented with Ato’s confession when he said that they were hoping the national government would conduct a deeper probe of the Tentorio murder case. (by Germelina Lacorte, Williamor Magbanua, Inquirer Mindanao, Sunday, February 19th, 2012)

A year after illegal arrest, groups clamor for detained poet’s release; NUPL files motion for immediate resolution of Ericson Acosta case before DOJ

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A year after illegal arrest, groups clamor for detained poet’s release; NUPL files motion for immediate resolution of Ericson Acosta case before DOJ

A year after the illegal arrest of poet and former UP Collegian editor Ericson Acosta, his family, colleagues, human rights advocates and supporters “demand nothing less than his immediate and unconditional release.”

“Ericson’s sense of responsibility as Iskolar ng Bayan has led him to work in the grassroots and create art with the people.  (His) right to participate productively as a free citizen of this country is violated each day he remains in detention,” read a statement released by the Free Ericson Acosta Campaign (FEAC) in a press conference and music jam at the University of the Philippines Palma Hall lobby last Friday, February 10.

The event was organized by the All-UP Academic Employees Union and Acosta’s former colleagues at the university, and was attended by prominent Filipino cultural icons – US-based cultural critic and thinker Prof. Epifanio San Juan, Jr; women’s studies author Delia Aguilar; award-winning scriptwriter and authorRicky Lee; actress, screenwriter and UP Regent Bibeth Orteza; UP College of Mass Communications Dean and popular culture critic Roland Tolentino; and protest songwriter and poet Jess Santiago, among others.

“The illegal arrest and continued unjust detention of cultural worker Ericson Acosta is concrete proof of the existence of political prisoners. There is nothing righteous with having our artists like Acosta suffer in incarceration,” Samahan ng Ex-Detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto (SELDA) Secretary-General Angie Ipong said in a news release.

Acosta was arrested without warrant by the military on February 13, 2011, in Brgy. Bay-ang, San Jorge, Samar just because the laptop he carried roused the suspicion of soldiers. Due to serious irregularities and rights abuses in the conduct of his arrest, his counsel led by Atty. Jun Oliva of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), filed a Petition for Review before the DOJ in September 2011, and moved to defer court proceedings pending resolution of the said petition. Ideally, a review petition should be resolved within 60 days.

“It is important for us to bear witness to the truth of the injustice done to Acosta,” Prof. E. San Juan, Jr. said.

Exactly a year after Acosta’s illegal arrest, the NUPL will today file a motion for the immediate resolution of the Review Petition. Aside from difficulties faced by his family after Acosta’s detention in Samar, they also protest continued military harassment and intimidation by troopers from the 8th ID deployed within the jail facility.

“Instead of settling for a stable, well-paying job, or going abroad like his brothers, our son Ericson chose to teach literacy and work for the oppressed in far-flung provinces. Something is terribly wrong when he is made to suffer a year in prison for doing what he thinks is right,” lamented Acosta’s father Isaias, who is now in his late ‘70s.

Acosta was named finalist of the 2011 Imprisoned Artist Prize at the Freedom to Create Awards Festival in Cape Town South Africa last November, along with imprisoned artists from Burma and Tibet. Various human rights groups and cultural institutions, including the Amnesty International, Campaign for Human Rights in the Philippines-United Kingdom, University Council of UP Diliman, National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the Philippine Center of the International PEN (Poets, Essayists, Novelists) support the call for his release.

“Even if it has become dangerous to integrate with the masses, the scholars of the nation know it has to be done,” Dean Roland Tolentino said in his speech at the UP.

Acosta’s songs and writings from prison is posted by the Free Ericson Acosta Campaign on his JAILHOUSE BLOG (http://www.acostaprisondiary.blogspot.com). Pictures can be downloaded from the Free Ericson Acosta Facebook page and campaign blog (http://www.freeacosta.blogspot.com).

February 13, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Reference: Atty Jun Oliva (NUPL)
(02) 9206660

———————————————————————
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
Diliman, Quezon City, PHILIPPINES 1101
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.

NUPL on Palparan’s statement that charges were illegally filed

ICHRP Secretariat
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NUPL on Palparan’s statement that charges were illegally filed

Press Release –  On the statement made by Ret. Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan through lawyer Atty. Jesus Santos – whose authority to represent the retired general is suspect – that the filing of the cases against him was done illegally, the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), private prosecutor of the Cadapan and Empeno families, through its Secretary General Atty. Edre Olalia said:

“General Palparan has the gall and temerity to claim that the charges against him were done illegally. That is farthest from the truth. He is turning things upside down.

It’s the height of hypocrisy to wrongly claim that he is the victim while he is known to have routinely and cavalierly deprived many of their basic rights as human beings when they were summarily killed, disappeared and tortured.

The mothers of the two UP students went by the book and are enduring the tedious and even frustrating process to hold him accountable. His credibility is so low that his every word is suspect.

Come out of your putrid sewage hole and see the light. Join your avid fan former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in jail. Stop putting your attorneys on the spot to take the fall for you even as they trifle with the emotions of the suffering mothers by recklessly springing bare claims their young and abused daughters are still alive.”#

Reference: Atty. Edre U. Olalia, NUPL Secretary General, +639175113373
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National Secretariat
National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers(NUPL)
3F Erythrina Bldg., Maaralin corner Matatag Sts. Central District,Quezon City, Philippines
Tel.No.920-6660,Telefax No. 927- 2812
Email addresses:nupl2007@gmail.com and nuplphilippines@yahoo.com
“Visit the NUPL  at http://www.nupl.net/

By calling yourselves the ‘people’s lawyer,’ you have made a remarkable choice. You decided not to remain in the sidelines. Where human rights are assaulted, you have chosen to sacrifice the comfort of the fence for the dangers of the battlefield. But only those who choose to fight on the battlefield live beyond irrelevance.”  Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno, in his message to the NUPL Founding Congress,Sept. 15, 2007

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