No to special treatment and military detention for Palparan - Karapatan

By KARAPATAN
August 17, 2014

QUEZON CITY – “Butchers and cowardly generals like Jovito Palparan Jr. deserve justice – the kind that is commensurate to the number of civilian lives he and his men took and toyed with, while former President Arroyo and the military establishment were cheering him on. To play him up as the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ hero, to give him a minute longer to avoid prosecution, and then suggest to place him under military detention are all forms of travesty of justice. It encourages every person in uniform to do the same dirty deeds of Palparan,” Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said in reaction to statements by former military officials and Sen. Antonio Trillanes over the week-end.

This came after the recent arrest of Gen. Palparan last August 12 after almost three years of hiding. Palparan is facing two counts of kidnapping with serious illegal detention for the disappearance of two activists Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño. Two of his accused in the case, Army Colonel Felipe Anotado Jr. and Master Sergeant Edgar Osorio, are under military custody.

Palabay said placing Palparan under military detention, just like his cohorts, is a tactic being used by the AFP for its men to evade accountability. “These are essentially like back-to-barracks orders, similar to what the AFP did with Lt. Col. Alexis Bravo, Lt. Dante Jimenez and 14 other members of the Army’s 27th Infantry Battalion who were responsible for the 2012 massacre of anti-mining activist Juvy Capion and her two sons,” she added.

“The AFP’s protection of their own and their defense of the acts of butchers like Palparan as acts of duty are typical of the Philippine military, whose mercenary and fascist tradition and orientation breed generals like Palparan. They kill innocent civilians, massacre families, disappear suspected rebels, and sow terror in communities, in the name of counter-insurgency programs, which continue to happen under the Aquino government,” Palabay said.

Enforce UN judgement vs. Palparan

Karapatan today also called on the Aquino administration to enforce the views of the United Nations Human Rights Committee to prosecute and hold Palparan accountable for the killings of Eden Marcellana and Eddie Gumanoy.

Marcellana, Karapatan Southern Tagalog secretary general, was abducted on April 2003 by soldiers under Gen. Palparan in Mindoro Oriental, while conducting a fact-finding mission on human rights violations perpetrated by Palparan and his men. All of the 11 members of the fact-finding team were abducted. They were eventually located in different jails, except for two, Marcellana and Eddie Gumanoy, a peasant leader, whose both bodies were found lifeless with gunshot wounds and torture marks. Witnesses point to the “Bonnet Gang,” a paramilitary group linked with the Philippine Army’s 204th Infantry Battalion of which then Col. Jovito Palparan Jr. was the commanding officer.

Murder charges were filed against Gen. Palparan and his men for the Marcellana-Gumanoy killing but the Justice Department, then headed by Raul Gonzales, junked the charges. It was in 2008 that the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) released its views on the case, after a complaint was filed by Karapatan and relatives of the victims, assisted by counsels from the National Union of People’s Lawyers. The UNHRC concluded that the Philippine government failed to protect the rights of Marcellana and Gumanoy and provide remedies for redress for the relatives of the victims. The Committee also urged the Philippine government to initiate and pursue criminal proceedings against Palparan and his men, and to ensure that such violation do not recur in the future.