Transgender rights advocates condemn Duterte decision as affront to sovereignty

PROTEST VS PARDON Members of the LGBTQ+ organization Bahaghari and Gabriela protest President Duterte’s granting of absolute pardon to US Marine Joseph Scott Pemberton during a rally at the Boy Scouts’ Circle on Tomas Morato Avenue, Quezon City, on Monday. (Photo by LYN RILLON / Philippine Daily Inquirer)

MANILA, Philippines — Transgender and human rights advocates on Tuesday condemned the absolute pardon granted to former US Marine Lance Cpl. Joseph Scott Pemberton, calling President Rodrigo Duterte’s move an affront to the country’s sovereignty.

Bataan Rep. Geraldine Roman, who broke barriers as the country’s first transgender woman elected to Congress, strongly disagreed with the pardon, calling it a case of “special treatment” for a foreigner.

In a post on her Facebook page, Roman said Pemberton should be made to pay for his crime “to the full extent of law” for killing transwoman Jennifer Laude in 2014.

“Many of our people have violated the law but are not given the same privilege. This should not be,” Roman said.

Trans sister’s case

“As a human being with a trans experience, I cannot help but be hurt by the developments in the case of my trans sister Jennifer Laude against Joseph Scott Pemberton,” she said.

“I strongly express my disagreement to the decision,” said Roman, who is allied with the administration’s supermajority in the House of Representatives.

The vice chair of the House women and gender equality panel acknowledged the country’s bilateral ties with the United States but said this should not have influenced Laude’s case.

True Colors Coalition-Pilipinas, an LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) rights group, said the pardon showed that the Duterte administration was “subservient” to the US government.

The group said it was also a reflection of the government’s failure to recognize the rights of LGBTQ members.

“This government should be held liable for this kind of policy and injustice that prevails in our country,” it said.

Virgie Lacsa-Suarez, a lawyer for the Laude family, said her killing reflected the “systematic discrimination and violence inflicted by the US on Filipino women, children and the LGBTQ community.”

Many Filipino convicts

“There are too many Filipino convicts, already in their twilight years serving their sentence, why give it (pardon) to a foreigner, a US soldier who committed an atrocious crime?” she said.

Another lawyer for the Laudes, Romel Bagares of the advocacy group Centerlaw linked the pardon to Duterte’s order to halt the abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States.

“Laude’s case shows Filipinos have remained second-class citizens in their own country, their own welfare being secondary only to those of foreigners,” Bagares said.

“We’ve been here before … so it continues our subservience to US interests,” he added, referring to the first criminal case under the VFA involving another Marine, Daniel Smith.

Smith was sentenced in 2006 to a prison term of 40 years for the rape of a Filipino woman but was acquitted by an appeals court in 2009 after the woman withdrew the charges. Smith was detained at the US Embassy.

—With reports from Joanna Rose Aglibot and Dona Z. Pazzibugan