Raps filed vs Duterte at UNHRC

APPEALS Relatives of slain activists write lawmakers to look into the cases of their loved ones.  —Lyn Rillon

MANILA, Philippines — The families of labor organizers and activists who were killed in several simultaneous police operations in 2021 on Friday filed a complaint at the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) against former President Rodrigo Duterte and two former officials of the Philippine National Police.

Liezl Asuncion, wife of trade union leader Manny Asuncion, and Rosenda Lemita, mother of activist Ana Marie Evangelista, filed separate complaints at the UN body, after domestic legal remedies supposedly failed them.

READ: Justice and Bloody Sunday

The women’s complaints accused Duterte, former PNP chief Guillermo Eleazar and Police Col. Lito Patay of violating the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the Philippines signed in 1966.

READ: Trillanes: ICC given Duterte ‘death squad’ transcript

“We promise that we will not stop until Duterte and his ‘Davao Boys’ are held accountable for their crimes against the people,” Asuncion told reporters.

Patay was supposedly a part of the “Davao Boys,” a group of police officers whom Duterte summoned to Metro Manila at the height of his deadly war on drugs, for which he already faces charges of “crimes against humanity” before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Also named in the complaints 17 more police officers, who were mostly assigned in the Southern Luzon police command.

Asuncion’s husband Manny was among nine individuals who were killed in the police operation that involved simultaneous raids in the Calabarzon region on March 7, 2021, that has come to be known as the 2021 Bloody Sunday raids.

The fatalities in the Bloody Sunday raids included six who were killed in Rizal, two in Batangas, and one in Cavite.

Assisted by the National Union of Public Lawyers (NUPL), Asuncion said she tried to seek recourse in the courts and charged 20 police officers over the killings.

However, Department of Justice prosecutors are still reviewing their initial dismissal of the charges purportedly for lack of evidence.

Doing everything

“We’ve been doing everything that we can to achieve justice,” Asuncion said.

However, NUPL president Ephraim Cortez said the case has a good chance at the UNHRC because they had sufficient eyewitness affidavits to establish that the victims were killed after they were by “overpowered” by the police.

“If we remember, what they said was that Bloody Sunday was a drive against criminality,” Cortez said. “This is what we want to highlight: that in one day more than 52 search warrants were issued by a court.”

Cortez said the warrants included Manny Asuncion as well as Lemita’s daughter Ana Marie Evangelista and her husband Ariel Evangelista.

Atty. Ephraim Cortez (right), president of National Union of People’s Lawyers, is among the legal counsels who led the filing of complaint before the United Nations Human Rights Committee regarding Bloody Sunday, a simultaneous police and military operations on March 2021 where nine activists were killed in CALABARZON region. Cortez said that “tokhang” and the Bloody Sunday (anti-insurgency) are the same (kind of) operations meant to kill both drug targets and activists. Also in photo are relatives those killed in the operation: Liezel Asuncion (left), wife of labor leader Manny Asuncion; Rosenda Lemita (2nd from left), mother of Ana Mariz “Chai” Lemita-Evangelista; and Atty. VJ Topacio, HUSTISYA national board member and son of NDF peace consultants Eufemia Magpantay and Agaton Topacio. —Inquirer photo/Lyn Rillon

Deadly witch hunt

The lawyer pointed out that what was supposed to be a campaign to go after syndicates became a witch hunt against activists.

For Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay, this new complaint against Duterte at the UNHRC would “complement” the ICC investigation “in terms of looking at the situation in the Philippines.”

“We have no other choice, but to continue to fight for justice,” Palabay said. “Since President Marcos still does not want to cooperate with the [ICC] until now, it is in our hands to continue the call for justice.”

Filing human rights violations before the UN body was not the first time, Palabay noted, as complaints were also filed during the time of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Asked of the legal remedies to compel the government to adhere to UNHRC, Cortez said the NUPL is studying whether a case could be filed in a regional trial court to get a ruling that orders government officials to enforce the findings.

The UN body is expected to come up with a resolution on the complaints within the next six months, he said.

Meanwhile, other families of political dissenters and activists killed under the Duterte administration cry a collective plea to the House quad committee: Expand its inquiry to include not only drug-related deaths but also killings in the guise of the government’s anti-insurgency war.

Around a dozen family members of rights advocates who died in the hands of police during Duterte’s tenure wrote on yellow pad papers to express their grief and rage over the injustice they continue to suffer.