Podcasts

This is an interview with Sarmeguila Ereola, an elderly tenant for 42 years of a landlord, Fructoso Pascua, in Antipas, Cotabato. On March 2011, Sarmeguila’s children have asked the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to help their mother, who can now hardly walk and hear due to her age, to have the land she is cultivating be covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

When the Ereolas made an inquiry at the DAR office, they were shocked to know that the ownership of the 3.9 hectare farmland had already been illegally transferred to Elsie Desales, the landlord’s 15-year-old granddaughter. They did not know that Elsie, who has never lived and cultivated the farmland, is already the owner by way of the CARP until recently. They asked for records from the DAR but were refused.

In second part of this interview Talib Japalali, the elder brother of Bacar, talks about how his own siblings, his relatives and a lawyer, had been used by the soldiers as their middlemen in offering bribes in exchange for withdrawing charges. He explains that he is pursuing the case in court, not only for his brother’s and his own sake, but for the Filipino people who had been victimized by the military establishment.

Talib said he refused to accept the bribe because he wants to tell the Filipino people that the court process must not be twisted and that the soldiers must not be allowed to just simply walk over people’s rights. His aspiration: “I want reform whatever is wrong. Law must be upheld. If there is no Justice, there cannot be peace”.

In this interview with Talib Japalali, the elder brother of Bacar, who was murdered by 32 soldiers in September 2004 in Tagum City, he talks about how senseless his brother’s death was. Bacar was murdered along with his wife, Carmen, who was pregnant at the time, as they were sleeping inside their home when soldiers opened fire on the house.

Talib talks about his love for his brother; and his promise to him, on the day they buried him, that: “I will never stop until I get justice”. For over six years now, Talib and his siblings have endured numerous attempts, not only from the soldiers whom they charged, but even by court personnel–the prosecutor and the court judge–who acted as middle men in attempting to bribe him in exchange for withdrawing the charges.

Danilo Reyes, AHRC’s programme officer who wrote the Special Report on Torture, discusses the importance of understanding how the police, prosecution and the judiciary function in dealing with torture cases. These institutions of justice are responsible in affording possibilities of remedies –be they torture cases or not–to victims seeking redress. Without understanding how the system of justice and the people within it function in reality; and to examine how they understand their role, there cannot be any substantial progress in the protection of rights.

Also, Reyes argued that those who are routinely tortured by the police and military are people who come from poor families, the vulnerable, under privileged and who have no influence in society. When these victims seek help, they often have no means by which to complain. In the Philippines, unless a torture case is political in nature or the case itself is high profile, largely the victims–who do not belong to or are not involve in political activism–will not get any help or assistance.

Danilo Reyes, Programme Officer of the AHRC who wrote the report for Article 2, titled: “Special report: Torture in the Philippines & the unfulfilled promise of the 1987 Constitution”, spoke to a Filipino journalist based in Manila during his recent trip. In this conversation, he explains the obstacles and limitations of the Anti-Torture Law of 2009 and its Implementing Rules.

Reyes explains that while torture is perceived dominantly as political in nature or due to accusations of terrorist activities; however, in their report they have found that “even on the pettiest, absurd and reasons that are not sensible at all, the police commit torture. They do so to make money”.

Questions about why the suffering of a Filipino and the people in a society where he lives suffer isolation from being seen as a fundamental human rights problem. Without the knowledge of how miserable the life of a person in seeking remedies — by learning his difficulties in dealing with the system and his society–any discussion on human rights is meaningless.

The discourse about the lack of empirical data, which could provide a realistic discussion on human rights, is not about the lack of literacy and the understanding of the existence of violations in the Philippines. It is rather the lack of a thorough discussion on how deeply fundamental they are on the protection of rights. The common occurrence has developed an attitude of apathy and indifference yet the people are still engulfed by a belief that their society is democratic thereby ignoring its decay.

This is a discussion about the case of a 17-year-old boy, John Paul Nerio, who was tortured while in the custody of the police on December 11, 2010. When John Paul and his father, Pablito, who are apolitical and had no idea on how to complain, demanded to have their complaint of torture investigated, the police commanders ignored them. They rather defended and covered-up the perpetrators without investigating the complaint.

The case of John Paul is yet another illustration of the torture cases that are not political in nature–most of them have remained undocumented, which is happening daily in police stations throughout the country. His experience is what many other victims and their families have also suffered in the process of complaining and seeking remedies.

Maria Reynafe Castillo renewed her appeal to the government to once again make a serious effort to locate the remains of her father. She feels the lack of interest to locate the remains of her father is due to the fact that his is the only body that remains missing. However, his family, she said, is still awaiting closure.

Maria Reynafe Castillo talks about how she and the three other families of the deceased, Daniel Tiamzon, Hannibal Cachuela and Victor Nuñez, struggled to claim the bodies. They all submitted their DNA samples to match with those of the cadavers; however, only that of Nuñez has been positively identified. The identities of the two other cadavers could not be ascertained due to the injection of formalin.

In her search for her father’s remains, Maria Reynafe Castillo recalls the scenario at the funeral homes. The cadavers littered like garbage, expose to open sunlight, fast decomposing and emitting unbearable stench smell. The process on which relatives identify and claim the cadaver as their loved ones was completely chaotic.

Maria Reynafe Castillo talks about her father, Reynaldo Momay, one of the journalists who was part of the convoy in the Maguindanao Massacre. She explains what her father meant to her, looks back at the life he lived and her love for him. This explains why she continuously searches for her father’s remains. There is evidence suggesting that he was among those murdered but his body has not been recovered.

An interview with Abina Rombaoa, a human rights defender and relative of one of the three torture victims, collectively known as the GenSan 3. She talks about how the victims lived their lives amidst isolation by their own community despite having their names legally cleared from fabricated charges.

An interview with John Paul Nerio, 17-year-old torture victim. John Paul talks about how he was tortured after having been illegally arrested in Kidapawan City on December 11, 2010. It was only a few days ago that he told his parents about the ordeal of being tortured inside the ‘hideout’ of the police unit that arrested him and at the Women and Children’s Desk of the Police Station. John Paul, who is in his fourth year in high school, has stopped his studies due to the trauma he suffered at the hands of the police.

After learning of what had happened to him, his father Pablito asked the local police to investigate and to take action on the policemen involve; however, the police commander to whom the perpetrators are attached tried to cover up for those involved.

Dianne Mariano, an ordinary Filipino, talks about hunger and poverty being largely understood in Filipino society as the fault of an individual rather than a byproduct of a deeply-rooted systemic problem in an oppressive society.

Dianne Mariano, an ordinary Filipino, talks about what the right to food and hunger means to her, her relatives and the people in her urban community. She explains why having a source of income is not enough to buy sufficient food and to live a humane life.

Mr. Bijo Francis, a human rights lawyer from India, argues that it is a wrong conception that the defense lawyers must defend their clients to get acquittal. The role of the defense lawyers, the prosecutors and the court is to encourage witnesses to speak to find the truth.

Mr. Bijo Francis, a human rights lawyer from India, argues that not only the murdered journalists in life had lacked protection; even in their deaths their murder trial was muddied by the defense lawyers by “ridiculing the process, defying common sense”.

Censorship is institutionalized by law; government censorship bodies and society plays a ‘virtual policing’ role to enforce the law.

Discussion on how free speech is being suppressed by sowing fear to control the mind of the people. You can write, but the next day you’re dead; you can speak, but nobody listens—not because what you say is wrong—but they fear to share your views.