By Shayne R. Burnham
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia
MANILA, Philippines – On behalf of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights, human rights groups Karpatan and the Commission on Human rights discovered human bones in Bataan. The excavation was conducted in order to search for evidence of victims of extra-judicial killings and the disappearance of activists, verifying the allegations of Raymond and Reynaldo Manalo.
On February 14, 2006, the Manalo brothers were suspected of aiding a local insurgency and were forcibly taken from their homes and placed in military detention camps where they were tortured over a period of 18 months. On August 13, 2007, they escaped. Their families filed writs of habeas corpus and they sought protection from the Court.
The Supreme Court granted the Manalo brothers’ writ of amparo and ordered the excavation to corroborate their testimony and search for other extra-judicial killings.
The anthropology team found human bones at the former camp in Bataan, which was the same site where Raymond Manalo testified he saw victim Manual Merino burned by soldiers in 2007. The bones are currently awaiting identification.
The case of the extra-judicial killings and disappearance of activists were added to the last Monday’s impeachment complaint against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. This was the fourth impeachment complaint against Arroyo. The complaint stated that Arroyo “committed culpable violations of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust and other high crimes.”
In addition, she was accused of “explicitly and implicitly conspiring, directing, abetting and tolerating with impunity as a state policy extrajudicial executions, involuntary disappearances, torture, massacre, illegal arrest and arbitrary detention, forced dislocation of communities and other gross and systematic violations of civil and political rights and engaging in a systematic campaign to cover up or whitewash these crime by suppressing and obliterating the evidence, blaming the victims, terrorizing, intimidating and physically attacking witnesses, their relatives, lawyers and supporters and human rights workers.”
For more information, please see:
Amnesty International – Philippines: Investigate Claims and Protect Manalo Brothers – 7 November 2007
The Daily Tribune – House Locks Out New Impeach Bid – 10 October 2008
GMANews.TV – Rights Group Finds Burnt Human Bones in Bataan – 14 October 2008
