Posted on Friday, February 27, 2005

As anger subsides, torture 
victims lose interest in cases

By Cheryl Arcibal, Reporter

Third of Four Parts

In the euphoria that attended the fall of the Marcoses in 1986 and the subsequent release of almost all political detainees under the Aquino administration, the new government and even the human-rights community seemed to have overlooked one thing: the prosecution of the military and police officers involved in human-rights abuses during martial law.

From interviews with the victims, lawyers and political analysts nobody seemed to remember that the torturers should be brought to court and if anybody did, nothing was done about it.

Marcos’s long authoritarian rule seemed to have instilled the notion that it was useless for human-rights victims to press charges against their tormentors because they would not get punished anyway.

In fact, recalled Dr. Aurora Parong, the executive director of Task Force Detainees Philippines (TFDP), when the move to sue Marcos in Hawaii was initiated, nobody believed it would prosper. 

Parong, who was arrested and detained in 1982 on suspicion of keeping firearms for the New People’s Army and treating rebels, said that when they were asked to file their claim forms as part of the class action against Marcos, they made light of it.

“We thought, what would come out of it?” she said.

Neri Javier Colmenares was also skeptical. He said that when another human-rights group, the Samahan ng Ex-Detainee Laban sa Detensyon at para sa Amnestiya, was urging him to file a claim form, he was reluctant.

“We never thought that something would come out of it. . . . We also feared that after we filed the case, we would just lose and then what? We would just earn the ire of the military,” Colme­nares said.

‘More forgiving, more humane’

Former senator Gregorio Honasan, who as an Army co­lo­nel led several coup attempts against President Aqui­no and who had been linked to several killings in the late 1970s, had once put it: Filipino society is “more forgiving, more humane.”

Colmenares said that when he had a chance encounter with Billy Bibit, one of his alleged torturers, in 2000, he no longer felt any animosity toward him.

Being the legal counsel for Bayan Muna, he was filing the application for registration of Bayan Muna as a party-list group before the Commission on Elections. After his turn, he saw the application of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement and he heard somebody being addressed as “Bibit.” When he turned to look, he recognized the man as one of the officers who had tortured him 11 years earlier.

“I steadied myself and it seemed that I wasn’t feeling any rancor [toward Bibit anymore]. [I guess it faded away with the] passage of time. Also, I knew that the system of Marcos was actually the system of torture. It could have been him [Bibit], it could have been anybody, so I didn’t comment. I didn’t greet him, of course. I just looked at him for a long time. I didn’t think he recognized me,” he said.

Even Akbayan Rep. Loretta Ann Rosales, who suffered sexual molestation, Russian roulette and psychological torture, when she was arrested in 1976, said she had the chance to confront the late Rep. Rodolfo Aguinaldo, one of her torturers, when she was elected a member of the House of Representatives.

“I told him, ‘Oh, the last time I saw you was in the torture chamber.’ But he told me he did not torture me and I replied that I would take his word for it,” Rosales said. But she knew Aguinaldo had taken part in the torture session because it was he who had removed her blindfold.

Rosales said she did not think of pursuing any criminal cases against her torturers, because she knew that no mechanisms were in place for the prosecution of her torturers.

Substantial victory

Like Colmenares, Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo, who was tortured by Agui­naldo, said he no longer has plans to file a criminal case against his torturers.

“The Hawaii judgment award­ing compensation to human-rights victims was a substantial victory already. . . . . What we are just hoping is to have a final ruling on the Aberca v. Ver case,” Ocampo said.

Former senator Rene Sagui­sag, one of the lawyers who represented the Tulalian spouses, complainants in the Aberca vs. Ver case, lamented the failure of the human-rights community to bring abusers to justice.

Saguisag speculated that, for one, many human-rights lawyers, including himself, joined the Aquino government and became busy with the day-to-day survival of a government beset with so many problems left by Marcos and fending off coup attempts. Saguisag once served as Aquino’s executive secretary.

“It’s a sad commentary on the human-rights community and it’s weird that judicial vindication would come from a foreign court,” Saguisag said, alluding to the Hawaii judgment against Marcos’s estate.

Besides, he said, the failure to prosecute the military officers could have come from the “sudden turnaround” of the image of the military after the People Power Revolution.

“They [military officers] all looked so heroic and handsome then,” he said.

“If we’ve gone after them [military officers], and we should have, I wonder how far we would have gone. And if we also did that, I don’t think anybody may have survived,” he said.

Rod Domingo, a lawyer for the human-rights claimants, faulted the lack of a leader among human-rights groups to gather all the victims and institute a criminal case against their torturers.

“Nobody is leading them [human-rights victims]. This [Hawaii] case started only at the initiative of Robert Swift, who singlehandedly financed the litigation, which is almost 20 years now,” Domingo said.

Failure of national leadership

Dr. Jose Abueva, a political analyst and former president of the University of the Philippines, said the lack of criminal prosecution against military officers could be called a failure of the national leadership.

“It is really baffling why the government forgot about the human-rights abuses committed by the military and the police during martial law. The military was instrumental in the ouster of Marcos and so it had probably something to do with that,” Abueva said.

Although Abueva hailed the recent victories of the government in its effort to recover the ill-gotten wealth of the Marco­ses and their cronies, the government had overlooked the criminal aspect of the abuses during martial law.

Parong said that after Mar­cos’s ouster the human-rights victims concentrated on moving for the dismissal of cases filed against them by the military and the police.

“Others also immediately joined nongovernment organizations and became involved in helping new victims of human-rights violations,” she said.

Parong said that prosecution was initially not among the programs pursued by the TFDP and it was also busy with seeking the release of other political detainees.

“Seeking justice then was more of seeking the release of political prisoners and that was it,” Parong said, stressing, however, that the TFDP now recognizes the need to bring rights the violators to justice.

“You could say something was wrong because what happened was not a comprehensive way of seeking justice. It was limited to getting the political prisoners out of detention,” Parong said.

Part 1 |Part 2 |Part 4 |