Angelina “Angie” Bisuña Ipong’s friends all say the same thing about her age. She does not look it. Not only is Angie a person so full of life but the wellness exercises that she religiously observes has made her unusually agile and energetic for her age. But life in prison had changed all these.
BY Cheryll Fiel
Bulatlat.com
PAGADIAN CITY – Angelina “Angie” Bisuña Ipong’s friends all say the same thing about her age. She does not look it. Not only is Angie a person so full of life but the wellness exercises that she religiously observes has proven very beneficial to her that she is unusually agile and energetic for her age.
But life in prison had changed all these.
Angie has been in detention for almost three months now at the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) in Pagadian City in southern Philippines. The 60-year-old peace advocate complains of a feeling of heaviness in chest, dizziness, nausea and numbness in some parts of her extremities. This started after she was finally transferred to the regular jail, after eight days of torture and solitary confinement.
As far as the courts are concerned, Angie has to be kept in jail because she of the rebellion charges filed against her by the military at the Branch 23 of the Regional Trial Court, 9th Judicial Region in Molave town, province of Zamboanga del Sur, the country’s southernmost province, some 800 kms from Manila.
Angie’s defense counsel, Emil Deleverio, said the armed men who took away Angie in a sweep of violence last March 8 from a Mission House in Aloran, Misamis Occidental did not present any warrant of arrest. “She was illegally arrested, brought to a military camp, held her there incommunicado for days and tortured her. The military clearly violated the law,” Deleverio said.
Tortuous route
After her detention at the Army’s 1st Infantry Tabak Division Headquarters in Pagadian, Angie was brought to the Southern Command Headquarters in Zamboanga City. A few days later, she was presented to media by AFP’s Southern Command Chief Lt. General Alberto Braganza.
Human rights advocates and religious groups, together with the Commission on Human Rights’s (CHR) regional director lawyer Manuel Mamauag, immediately went to the Southcom hoping to finally see Angie. But they failed. The group included members of the Free Angelina Movement that groups members of the clergy, professionals, students and lawyers who vowed support for Angie, as well as a private counsel.
Since they were assured that they would see Angie at the hospital, the group went to the hospital the next day only to be told that Angie had already been brought to a town in Molave, Zamboanga del Sur. It was while Angie was there that the military produced a warrant of arrest based on a rebellion charge. It alleged that she participated in an NPA ambush that took place more than a decade ago.
It was a tortuous route for human rights advocates, hopping from one military camp to another, before they finally got hold of Angie. Several times, the military deliberately denied having her in its custody while she was right inside the camp, being subjected to torture, interrogation and even sexual molestation.
Angie would later talk about her ordeal and how she pleaded with her captors to stop the torture. “After days of torture and relentless interrogation, I pleaded with them to spare me of the things they would not like to be inflicted on their mothers and sisters. I did not expect those horrible things to be done to me,” Angie said.
Angie’s defense
Deleverio, who is also a Zamboanga del Sur provincial board member and a human rights lawyer since the martial law years, said there is no direct evidence linking Angie to the charges heaped on her by the military. Aside from the fact that the warrant of arrest on Angie’s rebellion case was issued only after she had been abducted, he said the warrant was made on the basis of affidavits of witnesses who are poor farmers and clueless of the documents that the military pressured them to sign.
