[asia-apec 693] Rally for justice on the 26th anniversary of Martial Law

[GABRIELA]

From: KARAPATAN <karapatan at bigfoot.com>


26 years after declaration of Martial Law,
victims/survivors of human rights violations 
assail continuing violations

Victims/survivors of human rights violations and their relatives have taken
their grief and protest to the streets in a march from Morayta to Mendiola
on September 21 to rally for justice that has been denied them for years.
The protest-march, dubbed as the ‘Prusisyon ng Bayan Para sa Katarungan’
(People's March for Justice), coincides with the 26th anniversary of the
declaration of Martial Law by the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The rallyists
were in black and wore red arm bands.

“Human rights victims/survivors, particularly those who suffered under
Martial Law, have long been fighting for justice.  It has been 12 years but
the quest for justice of the 10,000 victims of human rights violations
(HRVs) who filed a class suit against the dictator Marcos remain
unfulfilled,” said Emily Garcia, secretary general of the DESAPARECIDOS
(Families of the Disappeared for Justice).

Garcia recounted the harrowing experience of Marcos’s victims. “The tyranny
that was Martial law bore witness to arbitrary arrests, detention and
torture, abduction, involuntary disappearance and summary execution,”
Garcia lamented.  “They will never fail to remind us, families and
relatives of the victims of salvaging and disappearances, of the
unspeakable agony over the loss of a husband, wife or children. We just
can’t lay the matter to rest and forget about it as our plight signifies
the very absence of justice.” 

KARAPATAN and its member organizations led the protest-march of the HRV
victims and their relatives to demand justice and condemn the continuing
repression primarily directed at the peasants and workers protesting
against the state's anti-people and pro-imperialist policies and programs.

According to Marie Hilao-Enriquez, secretary general of the human rights
alliance KARAPATAN and of SELDA, an association of former political
prisoners, human rights violations remain unabated in the past three
decades. “The climate of fear and terror that characterized Martial Law
remains after 26 years,” Enriquez affirmed.  “Barely two months after the
grandiose oathtaking of President Estrada who has sworn his commitment to
serve the poor, we witness instead the full-blast rehabilitation of the
Marcoses and their cronies as well as the continuing militarization.” 

EMJP (Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace) deputy secretary general
Rey Quindara cited the salvaging of peasant Richard Balangiao of Misamis
Oriental last September 10 by the 31st Special Forces of the Philippine
Army, the recent abduction of union leader Ramon Baylon of Los Banos,
Laguna and the arrest and  detention of 58 PICOP workers in Surigao del
Sur. “These cases are unquestionably a prelude to the continued violations
of civil and political rights by the Estrada regime,” Quindara said.
“Indeed, the military and police brutality and atrocities that marked the
dark years of Martial Law, still loom today."

Quindara added, “In a futile attempt to quell the growing discontent of the
people, the Estrada government resorts to the suppression of the basic and
legitimate rights of the Filipino people.  The intensifying militarization
in the countryside primarily directed against the peasantry only lay bare
the insincerity of the Estrada administration in promising a government
that is supposedly for the poor and for the masses.”

Antonio Liongson, KARAPATAN deputy secretary general, likewise assailed the
continued detention of 186 political prisoners in the country, 58 of them
the PICOP workers who went on strike.  Liongson averred, “Political
detainees continue to languish in jail, despite the approval of the
Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International
Humanitarian Law (CA-HRIHL) between the government and the National
Democratic Front.

In closing, Enriquez said, “During the dark years of Martial Law, patriots
and freedom-loving citizens were not cowed by water jets, tear gas,
truncheons and guns of the Metrocom.  National freedom and democracy, which
the martyrs and victims of Martial Law fought and died for, remain an
aspiration yet to be realized.  Let us continue to make the streets a
parliament of protests and mass actions in the assertion of our rights.” ###