Rights group likens military denial of torture to Nazi propaganda
A file photo showing one of the 43 health workers arrested by the military in a raid in Morong, Rizal, thrusting a clenched fist as they are boarding their bus on their way to Camp Capinpin Detention facility in Tanay, Rizal. INQUIRER PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—A group of human rights lawyers representing the so-called “Morong 43” health workers on Saturday likened the military’s denial of torture allegations to the pronouncements of a Nazi propaganda leader in wartime Germany.
The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), through its secretary general Edre Olalia, said the statements of the Armed Forces of the Philippines claiming that the operation against the Morong 43 was legitimate and that there was no torture involved, was a classic case of “Goebbelism.”
The description is a reference to Joseph Goebbels, the Reich minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, known for the quotation: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
“The military continues to speak in forked tongues,” Olalia said in a statement Saturday.
“In classic unremoulded Goebbelism, the military continues to spew ad nauseum… that the ‘Morong 43′ health workers are New People’s Army rebels, that they were not tortured and that their arrest was a legitimate operation,” he said.
“This patently demonstrates that the military is still in denial after all these years about systematic and routinary human rights violations right under its nose,” Olalia said.
On Friday, Colonel Arnulfo Burgos Jr., the AFP’s public affairs chief, said the military had evidence to show that the members of the Morong 43 were not tortured while in detention.
The Morong 43 were health workers arrested in a military raid on a resort in Morong, Rizal province, on Feb. 6, 2010. The military said they were communist NPA cadres training to make bombs. President Aquino, who took over from Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in June 2010, ordered the charges against them withdrawn. They were freed before Christmas that year.
Six of them have sued Arroyo for damages. On Thursday, eight more accused former President Arroyo and 18 others, including military and police officers, of torture in a complaint filed in the Department of Justice.
Olalia said: “How could the people even start to trust the military when in the face of abundant evidence and incontrovertible facts to the contrary, it continues to refuse to accept reality when it declared that they were ‘just performing their duties and responsibilities’.”
“And then it has the gall and temerity to gloat that the uniformed personnel involved in the illegal arrest, detention and torture have received ‘commendations and promotions’,” Olalia added.
Olalia urged President Benigno Aquino III to “tell his army to toe the line and behave.”
“Should he neglect, ignore or even tolerate this clarion call for himself to shape up or lest he be put to task for the acts of his subordinates, he may, in time, be next,” Olalia warned.
