Evacuees, students, health workers, and relatives of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) were one in condemning the human rights record of the Macapagal-Arroyo administration.
BY REYNA MAE TABBADA
Bulatlat
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Vol. VII, No. 44, December 9-15, 2007
Evacuees, students, health workers, and relatives of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) were one in condemning the human rights record of the Macapagal-Arroyo administration.
In a press conference December 8, internal refugees, the Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Right – Southern Tagalog (KARAPATAN-ST), the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP), the Health Action for Human Rights (HAHR), and Migrante International recounted a litany of human rights violations allegedly committed by the Arroyo government. These violations include forced evacuations, suppression of campus press repression, harassments and torture in militarized areas, and criminal neglect of 27 Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in death row in various countries in the Middle East.
Forcibly displaced
Five families who fled their homes in Brgy. (village) Malaya, General Luna and San Narciso, in the province of Quezon, shared the “threats, harassment, torture, unlawful arrest and detention” inflicted upon them by members of the 76th and 74th Infantry Brigade. They said that they were often called to report in military detachments and were forced to admit that they are supporters or members of the New People’s Army (NPA). The NPA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
“They said my husband is a terrorist,” recalled Pacita Mercado, one of the evacuees. The same accusation was leveled against all the internal refugees (IRs), with each of them vehemently denying the allegations.
“We are only farmers, we live in peace. It is the soldiers who disrupt us,” revealed Nizza Ilagan. She then related how soldiers routinely hit civilians. She added, “They should be there to protect us, not harm us.”
But it is the children who suffered the most during forcible displacements. The statement of a young evacuee named Jay-Ar reflected how children felt.
“Let the expulsion of soldiers from our home be their Christmas gift to us. They are now the ones who are living in our home,” lamented Jay-Ar, one of the sixteen children affected by the forcible evacuations.
KARAPATAN-ST took the five families in custody and helped them air their grievances to the authorities. They first camped out in front of the office of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) but were banished. When they went to Camp Aguinaldo, headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), their program was disrupted by soldiers who played Christmas songs loudly.
Campus press repression
Commercialization of education and violations of campus press freedom were the two issues raised by the CEGP as it presented cases of suppression of student publications that are critical of increases in tuition and other fees. From the period October 2006 to 2007, the CEGP was able to document 130 cases of violations against campus press freedom ranging from censorship, withholding of funds, harassment and surveillance by military elements in schools, undue intervention by the school administration in the operations of student publications, and the closure of student publication offices.
CEGP National President Jose Cosido pointed out that if mainstream media practitioners suffered abuse during the Manila Peninsula standoff involving Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Brig. Gen,. Danilo Lim, then campus journalists also experience the same things, if not worse. “Press freedom in schools are violated once the paper becomes critical of the administration,” Cosido said.
Harassments
During its medical missions in areas where militarization is prevalent, the HAHR was able to document cases of harassments and torture inflicted by government forces, especially against evacuees. The HAHR related cases that illustrate the “tragic results” of the counter-insurgency program of the Arroyo administration dubbed Oplan Bantay Laya (Operation Freedom Watch).
“When we were in a leper community in Misamis Occidental, the military was watching over us. Some were even interrogating us,” shared Dr. Reggie Pamugas. Because of this, Pamugas said, only 160 patients availed of the free medical services offered by HAHR. Pamugas quoted the residents saying, “military might learn of this and harass us after the team has left the area.”
As in the case of enforced displacement in Quezon province, children are the biggest casualties of militarization. When HAHR doctors conducted counseling sessions in war-torn Brgy. Ginanta, Al Barka, Basilan, Pamugas said, the children in Basilan molded guns out of clay. When asked by the counselors why they did this, the children said they had to protect their families.
OFWs in death row
Citing reports from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), Migrante International revealed that there are at least 27 cases of OFWs sentenced to death in Middle East countries. The 27 OFRs in death row included Marilou Ranario (Kuwait), Eduardo Arcilla (Jeddah) and brothers Edison and Rolando Gonzalez (Jeddah). Marilou Ranario was sentenced to die in Kuwait for allegedly killing her employer. Arcilla and the Gonzalez brothers were sentenced to die by beheading by a court in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for allegedly killing Reno Lumbang, Jeremias Bucod, and Dante Rivero in April 2006.
Wilfreda Ranario, sister of Marilou, said, “The reports are conflicting. How can a small person like my sister kill a 5’10 man and inflict 38 stabs?”
Norie, the sister of Edison and Rolando Gonzalez, shared the pitiful plight of her brothers who got hospitalized after being tortured and forced to admit to the slayings of three other OFWs. She recounted that her two brothers were blindfolded for 15 days, their feet beaten with a big piece of wood, and were pushed off from the 3rd floor of a building to force them to admit to the crime.
“Until these people are with their families, we will always be distrustful of the ‘appeals’ that the DFA has been promising all along,” said Migrante International spokesperson Garry Martinez. He cited the case of Reynaldo Cortez who was beheaded a week after the DFA assured the family and Migrante that they have already filed an appeal to the foreign court.
Cortez was sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia in 2005 for killing a Pakistani driver. Cortez claimed self-defense saying that he killed the Pakistani when the latter attempted to sexually abuse him. When Cortez was beheaded June 13, Exec. Sec. Eduardo Ermita said the government was surprised.
“Is this the way to treat the new heroes of this country?” added Martinez. Bulatlat
