Rev. Fr. Jonash Joyohoy, Executive Director, The Ramento Project for Rights Defenders, Philippine Independent Church
This sharing on human rights in the Philippines will focus on the recent cases of human rights violations in urban areas particularly in Metro Manila, on the efforts of my Church to obtain justice to victims of extrajudicial killings from our fold as contribution in the struggle to end impunity in my country, and then end on some personal reflections.
To begin with, I would like to share news reports from the recent violent demolition that happened in Silverio Compound in Paranaque City.
(Short video clip from GMA: “24 Oras: Giit ni DILG Sec Robredo: hindi pulis ang nag umpisa ng gulo sa Silverio Compound”.) In the video we saw what happened to the protesting urban poor when they resisted the demolition of their residences in the Silverio Compound in Paranaque City. Nineteen-year-old Arnel Leonor resisting the demolition of the urban poor residential community in said compound died of a bullet wound in the head while several others are wounded.
Similar violent incidents happened in San Juan City in January this year and in the previous year, 2011, in Pangarap Village in Caloocan City and Navotas City also last year, and in the around 20 demolitions implemented nationwide under the term of President Aquino. Just before the State of the Nation Address of the president, in Pangarap Village on July 23 protesters Soliman Gomez and Rommel Fortadez were shot dead while six other protesters were wounded when security guards of the Araneta family fired their guns at people making vigil in the picket line. In Navotas City on March 16, urban poor leader Antonio ‘Nono’ Homo was shot in the head by an unknown assailant inside his home, on the eve of a hearing in a case filed by their urban poor organization Nasaka-Kadamay against city officials of Navotas. The dreaded culture of impunity is now a common experience in urban poor communities, particularly in the course of violent demolitions.
These killings are happening in urban areas while similar abuses continue to happen in most provinces and cities outside Metro Manila. Contrary to government claims, there has been no stopping in the killings and abuse of defenders of environment, agrarian reform, workers’ rights, and the universal right to life and protection. The present government must account the 67 cases of extrajudicial killings, the 4766 victims of forced evacuations, and the 11,841 cases of military use of schools, medical, religious and other public places for military purposes, all within its first 18 months in office. It is widely observed that changing the government’s anti-insurgency strategy from Oplan Bantay Laya to Oplan Bayanihan does not have to do with content but with packaging similar to a candy wrapper used to make a bullet look sweet from the outside.
Shoot, lie, and get away from justice
From the video we saw, which is from the mainstream media and repeatedly aired in a leading TV network, we may say that human rights organizations in the Philippines are now confronting a complicated human rights environment. Killings of activists that are supposed to be happening only outside Metro Manila are now brazenly done in broad daylight. We saw how justice and police officials shamelessly spin stories before the media telling that the bullets must not have come from the police but from the protesters themselves, even if videos simultaneously show police operatives firing automatic rifles directly towards the protesters. Here we see human rights violations visible to all while officials openly and shamelessly try to devise ways to get away from justice.
In the Philippine Independent Church, we also have had enough of this ‘shoot, lie, and get away from justice’ routine. This is what we got over the years, particularly in the cases of extrajudicial killing victims Rev. Fr. William Tadena, Bro. Benjamin Bayles, and Archbishop Alberto Ramento.
Rev. Fr. William Tadena was ambushed and killed while driving less than 10 metres from the Church where he just had a Sunday Eucharist on 14 March 2005 in La Paz, Tarlac. Three Church workers who were in the car were also hit by gunfire; one of them has been disabled and disqualified to work for life. A few weeks later, the police presented to one of the wounded Church workers a suspect arrested for another criminal case in another province. The Church worker testified that the suspect is the same person he saw shoot them and kill Rev. Tadena.
The suspect was eventually convicted of murder in a separate case and now is under punishment of life imprisonment. The problem is that due to his prison sentence, he can no longer be brought to the Regional Trial Court in Tarlac City for personal identification by the witness. Worse, the original pictures of the accused were also said to be lost in the police files so the government prosecutor only presented to the court a photocopy, which is inadmissible as evidence. More seriously, the police also did not investigate the fact that the victim Rev. Tadena received several death threats prior to his killing for his active involvement in the agrarian struggle of the farm workers of Hacienda Luisita.
At this point, the prosecutor has already rested his case with the photocopy of pictures as evidence.
Bro. Benjamin Bayles was killed on 14 June 2010 weeks before the new president was sworn into office. He was killed by two hooded men on a motorcycle who approached and shot him several times pointblank at a roadside in Himamaylan City in Negros Occidental. While fleeing from the crime scene, the suspects were arrested by the police in the neighbouring City of Kabangkalan, who made roadblocks after the police in Himamaylan called Cabangkalan police by radio regarding the fleeing suspects. During the arrest, the suspect informed the arresting officers that they were army operatives. Two .45 pistols with spent bullets were also recovered. (photo: banner of Benjamin Bayles, Bishop Alberto Ramento & Fr. William Tadena (from left to right)).
As the case progresses, there however are very worrying results. One is the result of the ballistics and paraffin tests conducted by police on the guns recovered and on the arms of suspects. Both the ballistics and the paraffin tests gave negative results telling that the slugs that killed the victims did not come from the guns of the suspects. The negative paraffin tests also tell that the suspects did not fire guns during the day that they were arrested. And worse, the police radio communications logbook in Cabangkalan City was lost, while the particular page in the police radio communications logbook that recorded the radio communications between the two police stations when the suspects were arrested is likewise missing. This is telling, that the records in the two police stations that show connection between the killing in Himamaylan City and that the arrest done in Cabangkalan City are both gone. No investigation has been done on the active political involvement of the victim in the agrarian struggles of the sugar workers in Negros.
Archbishop Alberto Ramento was killed while sleeping in the rectory of the Parish Church in Tarlac City in the dawn of 3 October 2006. Very quickly, within the same day the police were able to gather all the witnesses and evidence necessary to conclude that the killing of Archbishop Ramento was a simple case of robbery with homicide. Within a few days, all the suspects were arrested. However, at present, six years after, the case is still pending in Regional Trial Court in Tarlac City. The police were able to close the case within a day yet the court is not able to convict the killers in six years. (photo: Bishop Alberto Ramento; source: WAC)
The bigger question to be asked is this: why have the police concluded the case without talking to the victim’s family and his fellow clergymen in the Diocese of Tarlac? Why have they not included in the investigations the fact that one of the priests of Ramento, the late Rev. Tadena was murdered just a year ago? Had they exerted more effort, they could have found out that the archbishop prior to his death
had been openly telling that he had been placed under surveillance by the military intelligence community; that he received a number of death threats through his cell phone telling him that he would die by a blade.
Had the police made further investigations, they could have considered the fact that Archbishop Ramento was part of the peace negotiations as a third party between the Philippine government and the Communist Party of the Philippines. That it was during his stint as a third party when the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) was signed by the principals of both parties. The police could have concluded for sure that the archbishop was killed for his political involvement rather than being a victim of an ordinary crime. The real guilty party could have been prosecuted and justice attained. (photo: banner of Bishop Ramento’s quoted message below originally written in Filipino; source: WAC)
In all three cases mentioned, what is common is the weakness in the police investigations allowing the perpetrators to get away from justice. The police and their superiors should have been on the side of justice. Ironically, in the incidents presented, they are not.
Use of violence and the government’s economic policy
Use of extreme violence during demolitions and against human rights defenders in plantation and mining areas now shows the implications of the government’s main economic strategy, called “Public and Private Partnership”, or PPP. Offering government resources which are mainly land and mining sites to corporations, mostly foreign corporations, for partnership naturally requires the dislocation of farmers, residents, and indigenous peoples who are occupying the lands and mining sites for decades. The recent incidents of violent demolitions now make it a lot easier to say that PPP is just a government reward to the already wornout privatization and liberalization policies of the much despised neo-liberal globalization.
Facilitating neo-liberal globalization requires human rights violations. Corporate and capitalist accumulation has never been compatible with people’s economic and social rights. In short, a government that professes to protect human rights on the one hand while facilitating corporate aggression on the other should see again if they are really serious about what they are saying.
Human rights and peace talks
Most of the people affected and struggling to defend their rights already have had enough of the government’s failed promises. Human rights remedies in the constitution and in international human rights treaties have been easily undermined by the dominance of corporations, which take advantage of the corruptibility of those who ought to implement such remedies such as politicians and other government officials. Thus in many instances, hopelessness towards the government pushes people to turn to rebel movements for help. Later they realize that such a turn for help has made them fair game for the military and other government security forces. This is what has been happening in the lives of many indigenous peoples in the mountains, in the lives of workers, and among farm-workers in haciendas nationwide.
Thus the struggles of people affected or threatened by corporate aggression in most cases are connected to the general political call for social change. This could be the reason why political activism, legal or underground, persists in the Philippines. This reality underscores the need for a political settlement of the ongoing human rights violations and to address the climate of impunity in the country. This explains the necessity of peace talks with rebel groups and to vitally include in the talks the need for social and economic reforms in the country.
Of immediate importance in the peace talks is the need to deal on human rights, particularly the implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law signed by the principals of the Philippine government and the communist National Democratic Front of the Philippines in 1998. If read closely, CARHRIHL contains the important human rights provisions found in various international human rights treaties and protocols. Thus the agreement seeks to implement international human rights standards on the Philippine soil.
Regretfully, subsequently failures in the peace talks rendered CARHRIHL useless and unimplemented. Had it been implemented, thousands of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances in the past decade might have been avoided. This is if we take into account the findings of UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston in his Mission to the Philippines in 2007, telling that the extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations in the Philippines are related to the state security forces’ counter-insurgency strategy.
The Filipino people have been denied an effective remedy. By failing to implement the agreement due to failures in peace talks, the government has utterly placed politics above human rights.
Defending human rights defenders and sustaining the victories.
There however are positive stories in the struggle for human rights. The recent Supreme Court decision affirming its former decision to implement agrarian reform on the Hacienda Luisita owned by the president’s family is worthy to note. To recall, lives were offered in the course of the struggle, including that of Bishop Alberto Ramento and Fr. William Tadena.
It is also worth learning that the president’s family attempted to take away the people’s victory through an appeal to the Supreme Court demanding over-priced compensation. The over-pricing from around 200 million to 5 to 10 billion pesos does not simply mean an additional financial burden to beneficiaries in the monthly payments for every piece of land they avail. More seriously, the attempt to overprice is an evil design to make the land distribution a failure, by the beneficiaries¡¦ inevitable failure to pay the costly amortizations. Failure in payments will lead to forfeitures of land mortgages, returning land ownership to the president’s family piece by piece. If they had succeeded, the Hacienda Luisita could have turned into a flagship case in the general failure of agrarian reform in the Philippines pulling back the agrarian problem to what it had been during the colonial period.
This does not mean that the victory in the Hacienda Luisita struggle is not the people’s victory. The moral and legal advantages of the farmers had been there decades ago. The decades of struggles on and off the streets, and the lives and sacrifices offered vitally resulted in the victory. Yet such victories may not have been possible without the roles played by human rights defenders.
Those people who commit themselves for a better world without counting the costs and threats they encounter. For such kind of victory to be sustained requires the continuing involvement of human rights defenders.
Human rights should be struggled and asserted and human rights defenders protected. The struggle for people’s economic and social rights must be supported and continued.
(photo: Hacienda Luisita, Tarlac.)
———–
Footnote: This is the transcription of a talk given by Rev. Fr. Jonash Joyohoy, founding Executive Director of the Ramento Project for Rights Defenders of the Philippine Independent Church based in Manila, during his visit to the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong on May 4, 2012.
