Jailed leftists start 8-day hunger strike

ILOILO CITY—Eight political prisoners on Tuesday started an eight-day hunger strike in Iloilo as part of nationwide protest actions aimed at demanding the release of all political detainees.

The eight detainees, languishing in jail at the Iloilo Rehabilitation Center in Pototan, Iloilo, 34 kilometers north of Iloilo City, started to shun from solid food and plan to do so until September 21, the 39th anniversary of martial law.

Reylan Vergara, secretary general of the human rights group Panay Alliance-Karapatan, said the Iloilo hunger strike was part of a nationwide fasting of political detainees calling for the unconditional release of 360 political prisoners being held in various prisons nationwide.

The eight Iloilo detainees are in jail after they had been suspected of being communist guerrillas. But instead of charging them with rebellion, authorities brought trumped up charges against them like arson, illegal possession of firearms and murder, said Vergara.

Political detainees in other jails also went on hunger strike. These include those in Camp Crame, New Bilibid Prisons, Camp Bagong Diwa, other prisons in Manila and jails in Bohol, Danao City, Samar and Misamis Occidental.

Among those who went on hunger strike here was Cirila Estrada, 49, who was arrested last year in the city on suspicion she was a communist guerrilla.

Estrada was arrested based on several warrants for multiple murder, frustrated murder and robbery, which Estrada allegedly committed in Antique and southern Iloilo since the 1990s.

Estrada repeatedly denied being a guerrilla and was taking care of her family in Janiuay, Iloilo, her hometown, when she was arrested. Her family called for her release on humanitarian grounds, saying she suffered from asthma and a liver disease.