Archie Gamboa
The chief of the Philippine National Police on Monday said no raid happened on an urban poor group’s office in Pandi town, Bulacan province, on Sunday, standing by his men’s claim that the “subversive” magazines and materials they took were surrendered.
At a press briefing in Camp Crame, Police Gen. Archie Gamboa said that before Sunday’s incident, police in Bulacan arrested a suspect on a charge of violating quarantine protocols while burning some materials which had purportedly come from the Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay) office in Pandi.
Gamboa said Lea Maralit, Kadamay chapter president in Pandi, had told the police about the materials being burned. “Actually we are saying [the materials were] surrendered because she voluntarily told the policemen about them,” he said.
Brig. Gen. Rhodel Sermonia, Central Luzon police director, said Maralit had asked policemen to go to Villa Lois in Barangay Siling Bata in Pandi to get copies of Pinoy Weekly, an alternative news magazine.
“There was no raid. [The materials] were voluntarily surrendered to the police,” Sermonia said in a separate press briefing at Camp Olivas, the regional police headquarters in Pampanga province.
Illegally seized
He said Maralit feared that the magazines and materials would be used during the State of the Nation Address of President Duterte. He said Maralit had expressed her group’s support for the government’s program of ending the insurgency.
Sermonia said that hours before police got the magazines, Pandi policemen arrested former Kadamay health officer, Rosalita Fortaleza, and a companion, Buenavil Fortaleza, for “walking casually” without face masks and carrying supposed propaganda materials in Barangay Siling Bata around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday. The two had tried to resist arrest, Sermonia said.
Pinoy Weekly and its publisher, Pinoy Media Center Inc., disputed the police claim, saying the magazines were illegally seized by policemen and that the Kadamay officers and members had been threatened to give up the seized materials.
They also claimed that Fortaleza had been arrested on Saturday night, and not on Sunday morning, as the police had said.
Gamboa said Sermonia should be “very careful” in using the word “subversive” to describe the seized materials, adding that the antisubversion law (Republic Act No. 1700) had already been repealed.
—Reports from Jeannette Andrade and Carmela Reyes-Estrope