It is infuriating that 24 years after the Filipino people brought down a dictatorship and restored democracy, some military personnel act like martial law was never rejected resoundingly by the militants at EDSA. It seemed generations ago when the brutal soldiers of the Marcos dictatorship terrorized the Filipino people, and yet from time to time in this supposed restored democracy, we continue to hear of reports of abduction, torture and executions conducted by men in uniform.
As the nation prepares to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the People Power uprising at EDSA next week, it is ironic that the democratic rights of 43 health workers in Morong are now being ignored and trampled upon by members of the military, who have resorted to the old Marcos line that the illegally arrested workers were members of the New People’s Army.
The soldiers – 300 of them, supported by eight trucks and two armored personnel carriers – raided a rest house owned by a doctor and professor emeritus of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine in the early morning of Feb. 6 and arrested the 43 health volunteers, including two elderly doctors, using a suspicious arrest warrant for a certain Mario Condes, a suspected NPA member.
Mario Condes was not one of those in the private rest house, where the health workers were preparing for a full-day health training and seminar. But the soldiers nonetheless handcuffed and blindfolded the 43 health workers and herded them like cattle into the trucks, claiming that they were making bombs for the NPA and that sacks of explosives were found under their beds.
The military said they had placed the group under surveillance for several days because they suspected them to be NPA members, and yet could only produce one arrest warrant for that Mario Condes. Obviously, their intelligence officers were not good at surveillance because they could only offer a name that was not even included in the group after several days of spying on them.
Whether they were indeed NPA members and making bombs or not is up to the courts to decide. What concern us here are not only the illegal raid and arrest, but also the claims of the 43 workers that they were tortured and humiliated by their captors.
Only the 62-year-old doctor, Dr. Alex Montes, was allowed to testify by the Court of Appeals on behalf of the 42 other detainees and he obviously was threatened by the soldiers because he only narrated about the handcuffing and blindfolding, which was deemed by the military as standard for interrogations.
Montes said he was subjected to prolonged and repeated interrogation while he was blindfolded and in handcuffs, was denied his right to see a lawyer, and was held in solitary confinement.
Montes said his interrogators repeatedly asked him if he knew a Tirso Alcantara, allegedly a commander of the New People’s Army (NPA) and if he was involved in anti-government activities.
A female member of the group, who was allowed by the military to be interviewed by the media, denied an earlier story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer that she was molested by her interrogators. Ballante’s mother had told the Inquirer that when she visited her daughter in the detention facility, the latter whispered to her that her captors touched her private parts while blindfolded and undergoing interrogation.
The narrations of Montes before the court and that of Ballante before the reporters were completely different to what they allegedly told their relatives during their visits.
Montes’ wife, Evelyn, said her husband told her that interrogators attached electrodes to his head, sending electric shocks through his body whenever his answers didn’t please them. Montes also allegedly told his wife that they brought him outside, still cuffed and blindfolded and jabbed his chest with sharp objects, forcing him to move backwards until he fell in a stream of water and nearly drowned.
The detainees also said they were accompanied to the restroom by soldiers and because they were blindfolded and handcuffed, a soldier removed their shorts or underpants for them to urinate. One female detainee said she heard male soldiers laughing as her escort removed her panties to allow her to pee. They also complained that they were not allowed visitation nor allowed to see their lawyers for several days.
When the Court of Appeals granted the detainees the writ of habeas corpus, and ordered the military to produce the detainees on Friday, Feb. 12, the military refused to obey the court, claiming that transporting the 43 to court posed a security risk because they had intelligence reports that the NPA would “rescue” them.
These soldiers not only had no respect for the people’s rights, they also think the justices and the people are so stupid they would believe their lie. Even presuming that their claims were indeed based on credible intelligence reports, is the military so inutile that it cannot even defend against the supposedly under-trained and under-armed rebels?
The military, however, promised to produce the 43 detainees the following Monday because by then, it said, they would have made enough security preparations for the transport to the court. What they actually meant was that they needed two days to prep the detainees for the court appearance, threaten them to “behave,” and make them more presentable to the public, meaning minus the obvious signs of torture. No wonder, Dr. Montes said he was repeatedly brought out for sunning from his solitary cell for two days prior to the court appearance.
This latest military atrocity comes almost exactly four years after special rapporteur Philip Alston of the United Nations blamed military authorities for the extra high incidence of extra-judicial killings since Gloria Macapagal Arroyo assumed office in 2001, which at that time (2006) had reached 800, according to human rights groups.
He said the killings went unpunished and unabated because the military authorities refused to admit the fact that there have been an unusual high number of political killings and have refused to even condemn the murders.
Prior to the Alston report, the Melo Commission concluded its own report in 2006 with the following statement: “If extra-judicial executions are to be stopped, the political will to do what is right, however great the cost, must pervade all levels of government so that our beloved country can move toward the greater ideals of democracy and justice; it must start with the President who must pursue the prevention and prosecution of extra-judicial killings with urgency and fervor.”
The military authorities have again denied any wrongdoing by its soldiers, and have, in fact, cooperated in the cover-up of this latest military atrocity. Amid all these, Malacanang has remained silent, which will almost definitely be interpreted by the military as a go-signal to move against perceived government enemies.
If the military gets away with the illegal arrest and torture of these 43 health workers, the country will move back closer to the dark days that the people ended at Edsa 24 years ago. When those days come, we can only hope that the people are ready to march back to Edsa and declare: “Never again.”