Kin of extrajudicial killing victims in Bicol losing hope

By Jaymee T. Gamil
PDI Southern Luzon Bureau

LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines — Bereaved families of victims of extrajudicial killings in the Bicol region have lost hope in attaining justice through government intervention, even as the Philippine National Police (PNP) reported an 83-percent drop in activist slays for the past year.

Victims here are left wanting as none of the 157 cases of extrajudicial killings recorded by Karapatan in Bicol since 2001 have been resolved.

Bicol ranks third among regions having the most cases of political killings in the country, with Central Luzon ranking first and Southern Tagalog ranking second, Bayan-Bikol spokesperson Tessa Lopez said during the summit on extrajudicial killings held here by civil society groups Friday.

Majority of the victims were members of progressive advocacy groups, and majority of the cases point to the military as perpetrators, she added.

“I cannot trust government agencies to pursue justice for us. Of course, they will not cook themselves in their own oil. We do not know who to turn to now,” said Hustisya-Bikol spokesperson Sonia Sta. Rosa, widow of murdered activist pastor Isaias Sta. Rosa of the nearby Daraga town.

Sonia said it was discouraging and frustrating to have her murder complaints against Army Major Marc Ernest Rosal and 10 unidentified military men junked for the second time by the Albay Prosecutor’s Office last November.

The Sta. Rosa case is only one of the two coursed through the judiciary here.

Most families opted to file cases through the United Nations Tribunal and the Joint Monitoring Committee of the government and the National Democratic Front.

In an earlier report, Interior Assistant Secretary Danilo Valero said the drop in political killings last year and the filing of cases against suspects showed that “the creation of Task Force [Usig] has been a deterrent” to such crimes.

Task Force Usig was created by the administration in 2006 to investigate extrajudicial killings.

But Sr. Aileen Binco of the Religious of the Good Shepherd Sisters criticized both the Task Force Usig and the Melo Commission for giving “orchestrated and planned results” regarding killings linked to the Arroyo administration.

“The continued exposure of these abuses to the public and international
pressure on the administration has led to the decline of the killings,”
Lopez said in Filipino.

“We need to unite the middle forces — the basic sectors and the victims — to
seek justice,” she said.

The Bikol Summit on EJK — sponsored by Karapatan-Bikol, Promotion of Church People’s Response, Hustisya-Bikol and other human rights groups — is the first in a series to be held nationwide.