DAVAO CITY, Philippines – Over 645 former political detainees and martial law survivors in the Davao region await the next tranche of their indemnification amid fears that some of their names may have already been deleted from the list of original survivors.
Fe Salino, secretary general for Southern Mindanao of the ex-political detainees’ group Selda, said the distribution of part of US$10 million paid for by the new owner of the Claude Monet painting discovered sold by former Marcos aide in New York last year, would proceed in different parts of the region from February 3 to 5.
But Salino said some former political detainees have voiced out fear that their names might have been deleted from the list because some of them failed to receive notices for the second distribution.
“During the first tranche distributed in March 2011, there were reports that over 2,000 names were deleted from the list because they could no longer be reached,” Salino said.
“But now, we’ve been hearing complaints from some of the 645 who received the first tranche that they did not receive the notice for the second tranche. We advised them to check their mail boxes,” she said.
She said some 20 survivors of the First Quarter Storm in Davao region might have been deleted from the list during the 2011 distribution but her group had no way of verifying because the distribution was done on an individual basis.
“We feel that there were those who did not receive,” Salino said.
“We asked for a master list of claimants (from the Commission on Human Rights Chair Etta Rosales and Lawyer Rod Domingo Jr., co-counsel for Martial Law victims) but they refused, saying the list is ‘confidential,’ even if we were among the claimants,” Salino said, “They are not transparent.”
The new owner of the painting, “Japanese Footbridge Over the Water-Lily Pond,” part of the “Waterlilies” series by French impressionist painter Claude Monet decided to pay Martial Law survivors US$10 million after he discovered the painting has been a subject of litigation in a US Court.
Salino advised Martial Law survivors who happened to photocopy the check they received in the first tranche to bring a copy of the photocopy as proof that they were part of the previous list of martial law survivors.
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