By KAPATID – Panay
OVERVIEW
At present, there are 23 political prisoners (PPs) in Panay Island detained in three separate jails.
Eighteen prisoners are held at the Iloilo District Jail in the municipality of Pototan, Iloilo, three (3) at the Guimbal Municipal Jail in Guimbal, Iloilo, and two (2) at the Mambusao Municipal Jail in Mambusao, Capiz.
Of the 23 prisoners, 16 are male, five are female, and two identified themselves as members of the LGBTQIA community.
Most of them are members of the indigenous peoples and peasant communities in Panay.
These PPs come from marginalized communities and sectors frequently targeted and persecuted by the government: indigenous peoples and peasant communities (16); human rights defenders (5); women (6); youth (6); and the elderly (7). Fourteen of the prisoners are sickly or suffer some medical illness.
The majority (15) of Panay’s political prisoners were arrested during the previous administration of President Rodrigo Duterte. Seven were arrested during the first four months of the administration of his successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The last one – the prisoner held under pre-conviction detention for the longest period (8 years) – was arrested under the Aquino administration.
These political prisoners are all facing trumped-up charges brought against them by the government on account of their political beliefs and advocacies and their actual or suspected affiliations with progressive civil society organizations. The most common charges involve illegal possession of firearms and possession of explosives, items easily planted by security forces to justify arbitrary arrest and detention.
Other charges include murder or homicide based on contrived and familiar claims by security forces that these prisoners were part of ambuscades and operations carried out by the New People’s Army (NPA).
These criminal allegations are easily concocted and elevated to the courts, leading to arrests and indictments, since the Justice Department relies heavily and undiscerningly on fabricated statements and testimonies prepared and submitted by police and military personnel, and often disregards indicators of evidence-planting and perjury.
For years, local human rights organizations Panay Alliance Karapatan, KAPATID – Panay, and their member-groups have assisted political prisoners with help from the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers – Panay Chapter, faith-based organizations, and other civil society actors.
Issues and Concerns
Notwithstanding the obvious political motivations behind these trumped-up charges and the clear pattern of persecution of progressive civil society actors through baseless cases, political prisoners are being treated as regular criminals.
At the same time, the government considers and labels them high-value targets, resulting in increased security conditions that impair their rights as persons-under-detention.
In jails, they are grouped with drug and murder suspects and sexual offenders, among others. This should not be the case. There ought to be a recognition that political prisoners in the Philippines are “prisoners of conscience”, detained on account of their suspected beliefs, advocacies, and political affiliations, and must be kept in appropriate facilities and under conditions ensuring their security and safety.
Political prisoners and their families also face enormous pressure, even from public defenders assigned to their cases, to plead guilty to the charges under plea-bargaining deals, instead of asserting their innocence and constitutional rights.
The threat of prolonged pre-trial and pre-conviction detention – which could last years – under poor prison conditions, hangs like a sword of Damocles over those detainees who dare to proclaim their innocence and avail of their right to a trial.
This is the same situation confronting drug suspects arrested by the police. They are offered reduced sentences in exchange for guilty pleas, an approach sanctioned by the Supreme Court in 2018 when tens of thousands were being arrested under the Duterte administration’s infamous “war on drugs”. Many detainees, understandably, opted to enter into plea deals rather than spend years in jail while the trial in their respective cases dragged on at a snail’s pace. As a result, conviction rates in drug-related cases rose from 32.7% in 2017 to 78.22% in 2018, 82.95% in 2019, and 82.54% in 2020.
In the case of political prisoners, they and their families are being pressured into simply admitting the trumped-up charges instead of facing years of litigation in a case for which bail is not an available remedy. This confluence of the non-bailable nature of the charges and the ease in evidence-planting is a reason security forces prefer bringing charges of illegal possession of explosives.
The fact that the Justice Department and the court system sanctions this approach undermines the presumption of innocence, the right to a speedy trial, and the right to effective remedies for human rights violations.
Political prisoners and their families also have to contend with the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Philippine National Police, and security officials constantly red-tagging them and publicly peddling a false and dangerous narrative that they are members of so-called “terrorist” or rebel groups.
In its 2020 report on the Philippines, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights observed that “[f]or decades, red-tagging – labeling individuals and groups as communists or terrorists – has been a persistent and powerful threat to civil society and freedom of expression.” The OHCHR noted the pervasive nature of red-tagging as a matter of government policy emphasized in the execution of Executive Order 70 s. 2018, which created the NTF-ELCAC.
Apart from endangering political prisoners and their families, this campaign of public vilification negates the detainees’ right to be presumed innocent. In part, red-tagging is resorted to because there is no credible evidence to support the trumped-up charges filed against activists and members of progressive civil society organizations. Red-tagging creates a false narrative against its targets, which narrative is then imposed on and consumed by the general public. Coupled with fabricated evidence and false testimonies offered by security forces, red-tagging undercuts legal safeguards and evidence-based proceedings as well as the supposed impartiality of the country’s justice system, especially with reports of the NTF-ELCAC conducting out-of-court briefings for prosecutors and other public officials.
Prison Conditions
In August 2022, the inmates or persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) in the male dormitory of the Iloilo District Jail in Pototan launched a protest action to demand proper food subsidy from the local Bureau of Jail Management and Penology officials running the jail.
While more than a hundred of them went on top of the roof of their dormitory and held a noise barrage, others who were confined in their cells joined and also made noise. The PDLs demanded decent food rations and for the warden to resign. In the investigation that followed, four officials, including its former warden, were administratively charged with gross neglect of duty.
The prison inmates’ protest dramatized the dire situation of PDLs inside detention centers. As they await the outcome of their cases amidst slow and delayed court processes, the inmates must endure inhumane conditions in terms of food, health, hygiene, and unwarranted restrictions on visitation rights.
The food budget for each PDL is only P70 per day, a measly amount especially considering it must cover three meals. The PDLs complained that because of the extremely low budget, their food rations are inadequate and lack the needed nutrients to keep a person healthy. A larger budget is definitely in order, along with mechanisms to ensure that the entire fund intended for food items goes where it should and that no portion of it is lost to mismanagement or corruption.
Most of the inmates are not afforded regular opportunities for physical exercise and exposure to the sun. Those who are sick are not provided health care and medicines. No regular check-ups are conducted, but only occasional medical and dental missions from concerned health practitioners. Health concerns, including those on proper nutrition, should be given sufficient attention.
Inmates also complain of unreasonable restrictions on their movement, such as the imposition of a two-week quarantine and isolation period for an inmate who attends a court hearing. This is unreasonable, especially considering that no similar “health protocol” is imposed on the guards who accompanied him or her. This quarantine period is likewise an unreasonable curtailment of all detainees’ rights against solitary confinements.
Visits are restricted and kept on a per-appointment basis, preventing families and friends of the PDLs from visiting them without prior notice. This is an unwarranted constraint, especially considering most people have no means to access or contact BJMP officials. Even visitors wishing to bring food to the detainees face inordinate scrutiny. There were also instances when delivering cooked food was prohibited.
More lenient health and security protocols are needed. Visitation rules should revert to those from the pre-COVID-19 period. Inmates should not be deprived of the limited means by which they could receive material, emotional and moral support to maintain their well-being. The mandatory quarantine and isolation period for PDLs attending court hearings should be discontinued.
In the long term, the government must take on the challenge of instituting genuine and widespread reform of the entire prison and correctional system. This entails utilizing a people-oriented and rights-based approach, departing from the focus on inflicting punishment as a corrective measure while giving primacy to developing a higher standard of living within detention facilities.
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The State of Political Prisoners in Panay was presented during the public forum on prison reforms by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) on Nov. 15, 2022.
Kapatid-Panay was represented by Mary Ann Forro, wife of Bayan Panay’s secretary general Elmer Forro and currently the coordinator of Kapatid Panay, an organization of friends and families of political prisoners./PN
