Rosenda Lemita and Liezel Asuncion filed a case at the United Nations Human Rights Committee against the murder of their loved ones. The decision to file a case was not made lightly – it took three years of delays and disappointment from the justice system to push them to seek an international avenue.
“Tax dollars should not fund the Philippine military death squad. I urge you in Congress to pass the Philippine Human Rights Act.”
Rights group DEFEND Southern Tagalog condemned the decision, asserting that the DOJ’s insistence on “presumption of regularity” is a “grave injustice.”
To date, there are 31 unionists who remain in detention for trumped-up charges and 56 trade unionists extrajudicially killed in the country.
Manny Asuncion was the very definition of an organizer: patient with the masses, always willing to serve the people, and filled with righteous anger against injustice.
By RONALYN V. OLEA
When then United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston pointed to the filing of charges against political activists by the Interagency Legal Assistance Group (IALAG) as violative of human rights, the previous Arroyo administration dismantled it. But even without the IALAG, the filing of harassment charges against political activists continues, even under the current Aquino government.