Aeta community cheers dismissal of terror case against two of its members

FROM BEHIND BARS Kin gather around Junior Ramos (with blue face mask) and his brother-in-law Japer Gurung (in background) after their release from detention at the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology facility in Olongapo City on Monday. Ramos, 19, and Gurung, 30, were acquitted on terrorism charges for lack of sufficient evidence. —JOANNA ROSE AGLIBOT

SAN MARCELINO, Zambales, Philippines — The Aeta community at Barangay Buhawen in this town expressed elation on Tuesday over the dismissal of terrorism charges against two of its members.

The community had previously vouched for the innocence of Japer Gurung, 30, and his brother-in-law, Junior Ramos, 19, who are both farmers. “Our community was overjoyed to learn that the two had been released from jail.

We worked hard for so long to help free them,” Liza Balario, the mandatory representative of the municipal indigenous people, told the Inquirer in Filipino in a phone interview. Gurung and Ramos were the first to be charged under the controversial Republic Act No. 11479, or the Anti-Terror Act of 2020. In an order dated July 15 and issued on Monday, Judge Melani Fay Tadili of Olongapo Regional Trial Court Branch 97 dismissed the case for lack of sufficient evidence to prove that the defendants committed the crime of terrorism.

The two men were released from the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology facility in Olongapo City on Monday afternoon.

Visit to spouses

Gurung and Ramos were arrested and detained following an armed encounter in Sitio Lomibao in Barangay Buhawen between Army soldiers and alleged members of the communist New People’s Army (NPA) in August last year. In November, they were charged with killing a soldier during the clash.

The Aeta elders in their community insisted to authorities that the two men had nothing to do with the NPA, and that they worked in the farm every day before they were arrested.

Balario said Gurung and Ramos traveled to Pampanga province after their release to visit their spouses. Both minors, the spouses were also arrested last year by the Army and put in the custody of the Department of Social Welfare and Development office.

The military had identified Gurung, Ramos and their spouses as NPA members. According to earlier Army reports, soldiers captured the two men and their spouses as they were escaping from the site of the armed encounter.

The Army said subversive documents and ammunition were found in their possession. The two couples denied being NPA members. They also said their bags contained only their clothes.

Some 600 members of the Aeta community were forced to flee their homes after the clash.

Suprised

Balario said the spouses of Gurung and Ramos were also happy to learn about the dismissal of the charges against them.

“They were surprised to see their husbands out of jail,” she said.

Balario said the spouses had been charged with illegal possession of explosives and ammunition at a court in Olongapo, and that a resolution on the case was expected on Sept. 22. On their return to their community, Gurung and Ramos were accompanied by soldiers.

About 30 more soldiers had reportedly been deployed to Sitio Lomibao to secure the area from rebel groups, the Inquirer learned.

Restorative justice

Roman Antonio, legal officer of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, said Gurung and Ramos had yet to decide whether to file countercharges against the Army or claim damages.

Antonio said the Aeta community was planning to settle the conflict between its members and the Army troops through an indigenous way of achieving “restorative justice.”

“In Aeta communities, they have a customary way of settling disputes. That’s what they want to apply here, and that is allowed legally,” Antonio told the Inquirer in a separate interview.