|
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
GRP Charged with
Violating Peace Pact
The Arroyo government
faces charges for violating a peace agreement signed with the NDFP in
1996. One of the violations is government’s failure to indemnify thousands
of torture victims during the Marcos dictatorship.
BY AUBREY SC MAKILAN
Bulatlat
|
Members of a group of
former political prisoners have filed a complaint with the Joint
Monitoring Committee of the government and Leftist peace panels for
non-compliance to a peace agreement that took effect in 1998.
One of them, Maxima
Luneta-Esguerra, 66, a member of the Society of Ex-Detainees for Liberation against
Detention and for Amnesty (Selda) said the complaint against the
government was filed on Feb. 11. The complaint centered on alleged
violations of the Arroyo government against the Comprehensive Agreement on
Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL)
particularly Articles 3-5 of Part III (Respect for Human Rights).
|
Class plaintiffs
Rudy del Rosario and Maxima
Luneta-Esguerra
Photo by Aubrey Makilan |
Under the articles,
the government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National
Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) agreed to prosecute persons
liable for violations of human rights as well as to indemnify victims of
the Marcos dictatorship.
Trinidad “Ka Trining”
Herrera-Repuno, also a Selda member and one of the key witnesses in the
class suit against Marcos in Hawaii, said that she has waited for seven
years since CARHRIHL was signed for the GRP to indemnify the Marcos
victims.
“In fact, the GRP has
been violating the agreements it had signed with the NDFP as embodied in
the Oslo I and II agreements signed in February and April last year,”
Herrera-Rapuno told Bulatlat. “It is high time for the victims to
officially lodge a complaint against the government for these violations.”
No
different
By failing to comply
with the CARHRIHL and enact a law that would facilitate the
indemnification of the rights victims, the current government is no
different from past administrations that allegedly tried to strike a deal
with the Marcoses, Herrera-Rapuno also said.
Worse in this
government, she added, was the reported transfer of Marcos’s ill-gotten
wealth from the Philippine National Bank (PNB) to the general fund of the
National Treasury and the dissolution of the government’s custodianship
agreement with the PNB at the height of the electoral campaign.
Acting Budget
Secretary Mario Relampagos admitted Feb. 11 that out of the P35 billion
($683 million) transferred from a escrow account of the National Treasury,
P17.3 billion had been earmarked for land reform.
“We have long fought
and won the class action suit and we hope that justice and indemnification
would evade us no more,” Herrera-Repuno said. “We have pursued Marcos till
we reached other courts when no court in the Philippines would hear our case. We shall
likewise pursue this government wherever and whatever it takes, until it
gives us what is due us.”
Meanwhile,
Luneta-Esguerra was shaking her head in dismay. She said she has been told
by the GRP representative in the JMC that only human rights cases
committed since 1998 would be entertained. “They will not entertain cases
before 1998? Paano kami?!” (What would happen to us?), she said.
The GRP member at the JS later corrected they will accept her complaint
for screening.
Luneta-Esguerra,
along with her six siblings, was detained in 1974 for subversion charges.
Military intelligence agents said their house in Pulilan, Bulacan was the
central armory of the
Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) and his
brother Jose as its general secretary. She, however, insisted that their
house only stored feeds for their poultry and pigs and not bullets as
claimed by the military.
Luneta-Esguerra’s
detention separated her from her one-year old baby. She spent a year and
three months inside the Constabulary Security Unit (CSU) in Camp Crame,
Quezon City. Her brothers spent longer years.
Union leader
Standing out among
the complainants at the JMC office in Quezon City was a tall gray-haired
old man, holding a copy of the CARHRIHL, and lining up to file his
complaint.
Rudy del Rosario, 69,
was a union leader at the Philippine Electrical Manufacturing Corp. (Pemco)
when he became one of the first activists to be arrested when President
Ferdinand Marcos suspended the writ of habeas corpus in 1971. He was
accused as a communist.
Del Rosario’s wife’s
health deteriorated in the two years she was looking for her husband
location. Unknown to her, her husband was moved from one detention cell to
another. Upon release in 1973, he lost his job and even was forced to sell
their house to support his ailing wife. She died two years later.
Ever defiant, Del
Rosario frequented Marcos jails since then. After the fall of the Marcos
dictatorship, he was one of a group of Marcos victims who filed the class
suit against the former dictator.
“As long as I am
able, I will be present in every action calling for justice,” he told
Bulatlat. Bulatlat
BACK TO TOP ■
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION ■
COMMENT
© 2004 Bulatlat
■ Alipato Publications Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified. |
