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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