Court ruling on UP students, farmer ‘a little too late’

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

A HOUSE of Representatives leader on Tuesday said that the Supreme Court’s (SC) decision ordering the military to immediately release two missing students and a Bulacan farmer “may be a little too late” and may no longer bring back their lives.

Deputy Speaker Lorenzo Tañada III has asked Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief Gen. Eduardo Oban Jr. to set aside the so-called military “code of silence” and instead lead fresh efforts in helping locate the two missing students from University of the Philippines (UP) Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan and Bulacan farmer Manuel Merino.

“Hopefully, the AFP may be part of the solution to the disappearance of the students and the farmer,” Tañada said, as he noted that the date of their disappearance will have reached its fifth year this coming June 26.

“We cannot allow impunity to continue. The current military leadership should help and be part of the solution and not maintain its ‘code of silence’,” he said.

Earlier, the military, through Deputy Chief of Staff for civil military operations Commodore Miguel Rodriguez, said “its investigation on this revealed that the (missing activists) are not in the AFP custody.”

Empeño, Cadapan, and Merino were abducted upon suspicion that they were members of the communist party.

Progressive group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), meanwhile, called on the Aquino government to enforce the recent Supreme Court decision.

Named respondents in the decision include retired general Jovito Palparan, Lt. Col. Felipe Anotado, Lt. Francis Mirabelle Samson, Lt. Col. Rogelio Boac, Arnel Enriquez and Donald Caigas.

Since some respondents including Palparan were either retired or reassigned, the Court directed the Philippine Army’s 7th Infantry Division and the incumbent battalion commander of the 24th Infantry Battalion to release the students.

“The Aquino government must make a decisive move and immediately comply with the SC order. The Aquino regime should order the Department of National Defense and the AFP hierarchy to immediately execute the decision and release the two missing UP students,” Bayan secretary general Renato Reyes, Jr. said in a statement.

“The SC decision should also aid the Department of Justice in its preliminary investigation of the criminal complaint filed by the parents of Sherlyn and Karen against Palparan et al,” Reyes added.

Arroyo should have been held accountable

Families and supporters of the two missing UP students said it would have been better if the Supreme Court found former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo accountable for their disappearance.

As a former commander-in-chief, the Families of the Desaparecidos for Justice (Desaparecidos) said Arroyo should be held accountable for all enforced disappearances and rights abuses allegedly committed by the military during her term.

On Monday, the High Court granted the petition for writ of amparo for lost activists Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan, who were supposedly abducted during their research on the peasant situation in Bulacan in 2006.

“It seems that justice remains elusive even under the new administration,” Mary Guy Portajada, secretary general of Families of Desaparecidos for Justice said.

Besides Arroyo, former Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief General Hermogenes Esperon, former Philippine National Police (PNP) Director General Avelino Razon and retired Army General Romeo Tolentino were off the hook.

“Parenthetically, the petitions are bereft of any allegation that then President Arroyo permitted, condoned or performed any wrongdoing against the missing persons,” the decision penned by then Associate Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales read.

Palparan guilty

For its part, the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) said the decision will bolster their chances of making Palparan liable for arbitrary detention.

The families of missing students on May filed criminal complaints against Palparan, which include arbitrary detention.

“The SC thus submitted ‘probable cause’ in the criminal case against the accused,” NUPL assistant secretary general for legal services Ephraim Cortez told Sun.Star.

Probable cause is the standard by which a person may be arrested. It means that the facts or evidence point to a particular person who committed a specific crime.

Cortez said that the Supreme Court also validated the credibility of the testimony of Raymond Manalo, who is one of the witnesses in the criminal case against Palparan.

“The testimony of Manalo, which the Court said was forthright, consistent and credible, will be the tough backbone of the criminal charges. It has been unshaken so far even by malicious aspersions,” he said.
Last July 17, 2006, parents of both activists filed a petition for the writ of habeas corpus at the Court of Appeals but the said petition was dismissed on March 29, 2007 on the basis of the respondents’ denial of Sherlyn and Karen’s custody.

On October 24 of the same year, Concepcion Empeño and Linda Cadapan, mothers of Karen and Sherlyn respectively, filed a petition for the writ of amparo.

The CA then granted the said writ in 2008 but the students were still missing, hence the need to elevate the case to the SC.

An amparo proceeding “is a remedial measure designed to direct specified courses of action to government agencies to safeguard the constitutional right to life, liberty and security of aggrieved individuals,” the SC said.(Kaecee Alvarez/Virgil Lopez/Sunnex)

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