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DEATH PENALTY-PHILIPPINES: A Mother Fights for Justice
By Stella Gonzales
MANILA, Apr 1 (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."
(END/2007)
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