Baguio pride parade offers sympathy to Laude family

TEN GROUPS mounted this year’s LGBT (lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender) pride parade on Session Road in Baguio City on Saturday. Some of them marched to protest the homicide verdict given by an Olongapo court last week to an American soldier for the October 2014 death of transgender Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude. RICHARD BALONGLONG/INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON

BAGUIO CITY—This year’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) pride parade here offered sympathy for the “injustice” suffered by the family of slain transgender Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude.

A group of participants unfurled a banner declaring, “Justice for Jennifer,” as the city’s LGBT community marched down Session Road on Saturday.

Although an Olongapo City court, on Dec. 1, had convicted Marine Lance Cpl. Joseph Scott Pemberton of homicide in connection with Laude’s death, the ruling should have been a murder conviction, said Myke Sotero of Metropolitan Community Church of Metro Baguio.

Sotero, who joined the parade, also spoke against the verdict on the sidelines of Baguio’s World AIDS Day program on Thursday.

“We abhor the reduction of the criminal penalty for Pemberton, and we are demanding full justice for the Laude family. [The judgment] is reflective of what is happening to the transgender community in the Philippines which is … the most stigmatized and most discriminated segment of society,” Sotero said.

He also assailed the Philippine government’s decision to detain Pemberton at a facility inside the Armed Forces of the Philippines headquarters in Camp Aguinaldo, instead of the New Bilibid Prison (NBP).

Olongapo Regional Trial Court Judge Roline Ginez-Jabalde, in her order, said Pemberton should be held at the NBP in Muntinlupa City because the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) does not clearly prescribe where a convicted American soldier would be detained.

She later allowed Pemberton to be returned to Camp Aguinaldo, where the soldier has been staying since his murder trial began, after being informed that the Philippine and American governments have earlier agreed to keep him under Philippine custody at the camp.

The judge gave both parties five days from Dec. 1 to provide the court the document detailing this agreement before she amends her decision.

“We appeal to both sides to grant Philippine authorities the power to decide as to how Pemberton would be detained because he was convicted on Philippine soil for a crime he committed on a Filipino,” Sotero said.

“Pemberton should be jailed at the NBP where ordinary criminals stay. We still believe he should suffer for a murder conviction because killing Jennifer was a hate crime,” he added.

Laude was found dead inside a motel toilet in Olongapo City in October 2014, after a foreigner, later identified by witnesses as Pemberton, left the room Laude had rented for the night. Jessica Tabilin, Inquirer Northern Luzon