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DEATH PENALTY-PHILIPPINES: A Mother Fights for Justice

Stella Gonzales

MANILA, Apr 1 2007 (IPS) - Five years ago, Evangeline Hernandez was just an ordinary wife and mother of four living in Davao City on the southern island of Mindanao. But her simple life was shattered when militamen allegedly shot dead her daughter, a human rights worker.

Benjaline “Beng” Hernandez was only 22 when she was killed along with three other human rights workers in April 2002. They were on their way to research on the situation of peasants in Arakan Valley, North Cotabato in Mindanao.

”I had no idea at the time that going on a fact-finding mission could be dangerous,” the mother told IPS as she recounted the circumstances behind Benjaline’s death.

An eyewitness account said the group was having lunch inside an isolated hut when a group of armed men – an army staff sergeant and members of its recruited civilian armed helpers, officially-termed “militiamen” – arrived and, without warning, started strafing the hut. One victim was killed when he tried to run. The others were rounded up and one was shot in the stomach. The man pleaded for his life, but was shot in the neck instead.

Benjaline and another female companion were made to kneel before they were shot several times, the eyewitness said. Hernandez was told that both had their arms raised pleading to be allowed to take their companion to a doctor when they were killed.

According to the human rights group Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of Human Rights), of which Benjaline was an official, the men later boasted to village residents that the “girls were weeping loudly.” The families of the victims filed a case against the alleged perpetrators. The case is still pending before the prosecutor’s office. The suspects are free on bail.

Five years might be a long wait for justice in most countries, but Hernandez said she is resigned to the fact that in the Philippines it takes about eight to ten years before such cases can even be brought to trial. In fact, Hernandez said, they might not even win the case at all – despite the testimony of witnesses.

There were only a few extrajudicial killings in 2002 and Benjaline’s case was so shocking at the time that it made news even abroad. “Then in 2006, the killings escalated,” Hernandez said. Karapatan has documented 839 extrajudicial killings since January 2001 (when Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took over as Philippine president) up to Mar. 14, 2007. But a police task force, created by Arroyo in May 2006 to investigate these killings, said there were only 118.

Extrajudicial killings – or as some would prefer to call them “political killings” – are summary executions and assassinations carried out without the sanction of law or a court. The left-leaning group Bayan (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, New Patriotic Alliance) says the perpetrators are state agents and the victims are politically-engaged individuals. The victims are mostly human rights workers, priests and pastors, teachers, lawyers, farmers and workers.

The growing number of Filipinos summarily executed prompted Hernandez and other relatives of victims of such killings to band together in September 2006. They set up their group Hustisya (literally: justice), and Hernandez, after giving it a lot of thought, acceded to become its head.

Hustisya is one of several activist organisations which recently brought charges against Arroyo at the Permanent People’s Tribunal in The Hague. The Tribunal is an international, independent organisation which publicly examines complaints on human rights violations.

Hernandez was pinning hopes on the tribunal coming out with an equally strong verdict condemning Arroyo as it did the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1980. After hearing four days of testimony from witnesses to extrajudicial killings and reviewing evidence, the jurors issued their verdict on Mar. 25. They found Arroyo and her government responsible for “gross and systematic violations of human rights”.

According to Renato M. Reyes Jr., secretary-general of Bayan, one of the organisations which filed charges, they decided to go to the tribunal after exhausting all legal means available in the country. “We tried to use the small legal space we have here but we were not successful. That’s why we had to go to the international community to ask for helpà We know we cannot do this on our own,” he told reporters in Manila.

Hernandez said she believed the tribunal’s verdict could play a role in bringing further pressure to bear on the Arroyo government. But she added that even the strongly-worded statement last month from Philip Alston, U.N special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, “failed to affect the government”.

“How many have been killed?” Alston asked in a statement at the end of his 10-day fact- finding mission in February. “Is it 25, 100, or 800? … Numbers are not what count. The impact of even a limited number of killings of the type alleged is corrosive in many ways. It intimidates vast numbers of civil society actors, it sends a message of vulnerability to all but the most well-connected, and it severely undermines the political discourse which is central to a resolution of the problems confronting this country.”

He said Arroyo must persuade the military to acknowledge the facts and take “genuine steps” to investigate the killings. On Mar. 22 he also called on the government to provide him with a copy of leaked military battle orders which listed groups and individuals considered “illegitimate” by the military, hinting that this organisation can expect a devastatingly-condemnatory final report from him in some weeks.

But activist organisations believe it is Arroyo herself who must be made to answer for the killings. As Hernandez put it: “Even a dim-witted mother with no background in political science can tell that Arroyo, as the head of state, has the power to dictate everything. Otherwise, it would mean that she has no control over the soldiers.”