HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
HR Worker, 3 Other Political Prisoners on Death Row

Fourteen human rights workers have been killed since Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo assumed the presidency in 2001.  And now her administration is about to execute by lethal injection another human rights advocate.  With him on Death Row are three other political prisoners.   

BY DABET CASTAÑEDA
Bulatlat

Roberto Solangon, 35, farmer, was vice-chairperson of the local chapter of the human rights alliance Karapatan or the Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights, covering the municipalities of Mamburao-Paluan-Abra de Ilog in Mindoro Occidental. On the other hand, Armando Vidar, Apolonio Garado and Sonny Marbella, are confessed NPA guerrillas from Bicol region, southern Luzon.

All of them are held on Death Row at the New Bilibid Prisons (NBP) In Muntinglupa City south of Manila while awaiting their execution by lethal injection. They are all political prisoners.

Arrest of a human rights advocate

Solangon, married and a resident of Sitio Langka, Barangay (village), Balao in Abra de Ilog, Mindoro Occidental was on his way to his brother’s home in Sablayan town to borrow palay (unhusked rice) seeds on July 9, 1999 when about 50 soldiers surrounded the bus he was riding at around 3 p.m.  He was forcibly taken from his seat, kicked and pushed until he fell off the bus. The soldiers showed no warrant of arrest nor did they inform him of the charges against him.  

Handcuffed and blindfolded, Solangon was forced into a vehicle. He would later realize that he was brought to an army barracks in San Jose town, same province. 

He said he was placed in a detention cell near the gate and, from a small window, he saw his family looking for him but soldiers denied he was there.  For four days, he was denied his visitation rights until he was able to catch his wife’s attention by waving from his cell’s window. 

Solangon was then transferred to another army barracks in Sta. Cruz town. 

Torture

When he arrived at the barracks, he saw a corpse in the same room where he was brought for detention. “May nakatirik pa na kandila” (There was even a lighted candle), he recalled.

When he could not identify the body, one of his custodians told him it was the body of the person he kidnapped and killed.

To force him to admit the crime, his face was covered with a plastic bag; his hands were tied behind the window. Then he was hit on the stomach several times.  He was asked about the location of a certain NPA camp while being punched and hit by rifle butts. Every time he collapsed, soldiers would pour water on his face.  This caused him to vomit blood.

He was given electric shocks and his head submerged repeatedly inside a drum of water. A cloth was placed inside his mouth to muffle his cries of pain.  

After the torture he felt numb and would stare blankly. He did not recognize his own family when they came to visit. 

On Aug. 3, 1999, Solangon was brought to the Mamburao provincial jail.  At this point, he said, his wounds had healed but his trauma haunted him from time to time.  He recalled that he could not even bear the sight of water. “Tinatapon ko yung tubig sa banyo” (I threw away all the water inside the toilet), he said

This condition lasted until 2001 when, Solangon said, he would still suffer hallucinations. 

Court case

Court records from Branch 44 of the Mamburao Regional Trial Court (RTC) showed that Solangon was accused of being a member of the New People’s Army (NPA). The charge sheet, dated Feb. 7, 2000, included “kidnapping with murder and ransom” (Criminal Case No. Z-1170).  His alleged victim was Libertador F. Vidal, a mayoralty candidate for of Sta. Cruz in the 1992 local election.

His military captors said Solangon was part of an NPA unit that abducted Vidal on March 26, 1992 in Sitio Calamintao, Brgy. Alacaak, same town, while the former was on a campaign sortie. Vidal was allegedly killed by Solangon and his companions even after the family paid a campaign fee of P 50,000. 

Based on court records, Vidal’s remains were recovered only after Solangon sketched the location where Vidal was buried. Vidal’s remains were allegedly exhumed at Sitio Balao, Abra de Ilog town on July 26, 1999, 17 days after Solangon was arrested.

It is worth noting that by Solangon’s account, the corpse was shown to him about five days after his arrest.  Added to this, Solangon claimed he saw a corpse, which he was asked to identify.  If the alleged incident happened in 1992, only the skeletal remains could have been recovered.

Court records also revealed that Solangon insisted that he was planting coconut trees in Sitio Langka, Abra de Ilog, Mindoro Occidental, at the time the alleged crime was committed. 

Convicted

On July 30, 2002, Judge Inocencio Jarique signed Solangon’s “Urgent Motion for Release on Recognizance” which stated that he was being classified as a political offender and therefore allowed by the Office of the President to be released on bail or recognizance.

He was supposed to be released on the same day to the custody of Mamburao Vice-Mayor Leonardo Alcantara.  But Alcantara did not present himself to take Solangon into custody.  Instead, a motion for reconsideration reached the court and Solangon was taken back to his detention cell.

He was later convicted on Sept. 2 that same year, and was transferred to the National Bilibid Prison’s (NBP) Dorm 1-A (Death Row) where he, together with three other political prisoners who were sentenced to death, are imprisoned together with more than 1,000 common criminals.

Three more

There are three other political prisoners who have been sentenced to death: Armando Vidar, Apolonio Garado and Sonny Marbella, all of whom admitted to Bulatlat, in an interview, that they are NPA guerrillas in the Bicol Region. 

Garado, who said he was a fisherman before he joined the NPA, was captured on Aug. 9, 2001. He was convicted for the crime of “multiple murder.”  Vidar and Marbella were captured during a raid on Feb. 20, 2002 and were convicted for “robbery with arson.”

On May 13, Garado was transferred to the NBP.  Vidar and Marbella, who were transferred to the NBP on Sept. 26, had another co-accused, Norberto Butalon.

Butalon died while in prison last Oct. 21 after suffering from severe diarrhea.  Earlier, he was also diagnosed of suffering from mental disturbance after his capture. His condition supposedly worsened after he was sentenced to death.

Political prisoners

Documentation by the human rights alliance Karapatan shows that a total of 233 political prisoners are languishing in jails nationwide.  All have been charged with common crimes. 

More than half of them have been convicted: 121 are now confined at the Maximum Security Compound of the NBP while four are on Death Row. 

Jigs Clamor, secretary general of Karapatan, told Bulatlat that this “tyrannical practice” of criminalizing political offenses began after martial law was abolished, during the administration of former President Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino.

Political prisoners were no longer charged with rebellion, sedition and subversion (the anti-subversion law was later repealed). Instead they were charged with illegal possession of firearms, kidnapping, murder and other criminal offenses.

This practice, Clamor added, is a clear violation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) signed by both the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in 1998.

The agreement provides that all persons deprived of their liberty for reasons related to the armed conflict should, on humanitarian or other reasonable grounds, be considered for safe release (Part IV, Article 4, No. 6). 

In 2001, the Department of Justice (DoJ) came up with a list of 32 political prisoners considered for release on recognizance. This was approved by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as part of her newly-installed administration’s goodwill measure during the resumption of formal peace talks with the NDFP.  Only ten were released.  Seven won their cases in court, while the remaining 15 are still in prison. 

But more were arrested since then. Worse, the Arroyo administration is now set to execute one human rights advocate and three other political prisoners. Bulatlat

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