2 activists question CA denial of court protection

Environmental activists Jhed Tamano (left) and Jonila Castro

MANILA, Philippines — Environmental activists Jhed Tamano and Jonila Castro said they would ask the Supreme Court to review two Court of Appeals (CA) decisions rejecting the temporary protection orders the high court issued in their favor in February.

“The appeal can still be made to the Supreme Court, and we shall file the appeal in due course,” lawyer Dino de Leon said in a Viber message to the Inquirer on Sunday.

The Supreme Court issued a temporary protection order for Tamano and Castro in February after they emerged to have been in military custody and claimed they were kidnapped.

READ: Eco-activist gets protection order vs harassment; 2 others denied

The court remanded the cases to the CA for the decision on their petition for a permanent protection order and whether they were entitled to the privileges of the writs of amparo and habeas data.

Castro and Tamano went missing in Bataan in September 2023 and disappeared until the government presented them in a press briefing with the claim that they were rebel returnees.

The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict previously claimed that the two women surrendered to the 70th Infantry Battalion (IB) in Bulacan.

Tamano and Castro, however, claimed during their presentation to the public that they were not surrendered rebels and had actually been taken prisoner against their wills.

In February, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed charges of perjury against Tamano and Castro but later recommended separate charges of grave oral defamation.

The perjury charges were later dismissed, but the defamation cases against them are still pending before a Bulacan court.

When the original cases were heard by the CA’s Special Eighth Division, the court denied their application for protective writs on Aug. 2, claiming they failed to prove their rights to life, liberty, or security were violated during their detention by the military from Sept. 12 to Sept. 15, 2023.

Lack of merit

On Oct. 29, the CA denied for lack of merit their motion for reconsideration on the denial of their prayers for the privileges of the writs of amparo and habeas data.

The writ of amparo protects individuals whose rights to life, liberty and security are threatened by unlawful acts of state authorities or private entities, often in cases of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

The writ of habeas data safeguards a person’s privacy from violations by those collecting or storing their personal information.

But in its resolution, the CA’s Former Special Eighth Division (Division of Five) said the petitioners’ evidence to prove their entitlement to the privilege of amparo writ was “largely speculative,” particularly their argument of a “smooth transition” from their abduction to their supposed surrender to the 70IB.

“Contrary to their argument, it would take more than a smooth transition to hold respondents accountable and responsible for their abduction,” the CA said in the decision penned by Associate Justice Lorenza Bordios.

“The rest of the arguments in petitioners’ motion have been exhaustively and painstakingly discussed in the [Aug. 2] decision. There is no longer any need to address them anew,” the CA said.