The GMA administration is overtaking dictator Ferdinand Marcos in making a mockery of the democratic process. Since it took power in 2001, its bloody record in human rights violations hit past 1,000 victims of extrajudicial killings and over 200 persons disappeared. The violations still continues.

The culture of impunity persists notwithstanding domestic and international condemnation: state forces killing, abducting and harassing Filipinos and still go scot free because of the government’s tacit tolerance and complicity.

No wonder, like Marcos, the GMA administration also witnesses the specter of its enemy, the NPA guerilla growing in political and military strength notwithstanding its vast superiority in number and weaponry.

We see the same culture of impunity taking another toll on February 6, 2010, at around 6 am at Brgy. Maybangcal, Morong, Rizal. Joint elements of the Army and the PNP swooped down on a farm serving as conference and training facility, disrupted a seminar of NGO health workers, and marched off all 40 participants and two employees of the facility blindfolded and handcuffed as “communist NPA” rebels.

The 300-strong raiders barged into the farm and forced at gunpoint the farm workers to open the gate. Despite protestation from Dr. Melecia Velmonte, the farm owner and her son Bob, the raiders forced their way into the seminar house, ordered all occupants to step out to give way to them to conduct the search.

The raiders led by Army Col. Aurelio Baladad and PNP Supt. Marion Balonglong, completely made a mockery of the Filipino people’s constitutional rights by using a spurrious search warrant that did not specify the address and place to be searched and the items subject of the warrant.

Neither did they observed proper procedures, they just lined up the seminar paticipants including the two workes of the farm, handcuffed and blindfolded them, then frisked them bodily.

The search warrant was intended for one Mario Condes sans any address but the raiders, who acted no better than hoodlums, applied it to the seminar house of owned by Dr. Velmonte, a specialist in infectious diseases and consultant at the Philippine General Hospital. The farm frequently hosts trainings-seminars by private and government organizations.

The seminar dubbed “First Responders Training” was sponsored by the Community Medicine Foundation, Inc. (COMMED) and the Council for Health and Development (CHD). The Army and PNP raiders tagged it inistead as “NPA training” on explosives.

The Constitution and the Revised Penal Code prohibit illegal searches or those done sans valid warrants. Even if the papers were legal, law enforcers must still comply with procedures like conducting the searches only in areas specified in the warrant and in the presence of the house owner and local officials.

But the Army and PNP raiders, acting like hoodlums, ignore all that – they made the searches alone, after ordering all ocupants (the seminar participants) and the family of Dr. Velmonte, out.

The “search” ended at around 9 am. The raiders declared they found four C4 bombs, a revolver with seven ammunitions, a hand grenade and beside it, several improvised land mines “owned” by the health workers. The reason why the Constitution requires the owner of the house and local officials to witness the search is to protect the people from law enforcers who have the knack to plant evidences like the PNP Rizal and 202nd Army Brigade whose bravado merely invites suspicion that the bombs they claimed their victims owned were actually planted by them (raiders).

Atty. Leila De Lima, chair of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) was fuming February 8 on TV at the military. She said the rights not only of the arrested persons, but as well, the consstitutional mandate of the CHR, was tampled on.

Even her subordinates she sent to interview the detainees were barred from entering Camp Capinpin. The Constitution empowers the CHR to protect the rights of the people. like preventing the violation of their human rights by investigating cases and recommend sanctions. It also has the power to subpoena people, including perpetrators of human rights violations like we have here in the forms of the Army’s 202nd Brigade and the PNP-Rizal.

Chair De Lima is not alone. Earlier, afternoon of February 6, Karapatan Deputy Secretary General Roneo Clamor, husband of Dr. Merry Mia, Olive Bernardo, Karapatan Services Head, along with Karapatan counsel, Atty. Ephraim Cortez, Dr. Geneve Rivera and Dr. Edelina De La Paz, chair of Health Action for Human Rights (HAHR), went to Camp Capinpin to inquire about the victims. They were shooed away

The seminar began on February 1. It ended with the participants landing in jail incommunicado, and not where they are supposed to be – in poor communities in need of humanitarian health services they are known for.

One Response to “Culture of impunity in Morong, Rizal”

• 1
  Peter G. Jimenea
  February 10th, 2010 07:17

  peter j.

  Pet, I think this is where the “Writ of Amparo” should come in to protect the innocent from further harm. I hate to hear the old adage which reads: “once people in trouble run to the police, today they”ll be in more trouble if they turn to the police.”

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