Congress asked to declare Nov. 23 a day to remember all EJK victims

Kabayan party-list Rep. Harry Roque on Wednesday filed a bill urging Congress to declare November 23 a day to remember all victims of extralegal killings, which will include the victims of the Maguindanao massacre and the Duterte administration’s bloody war on drugs.

READ: THE KILL LIST

Roque filed House Bill No. 4502 or declaring Nov. 23 “A National Day of Commemoration for all Victims of Extralegal Killings,” the seventh anniversary of the gruesome Maguindanao massacre.

Fifty-eight people, 32 of them journalists and media workers, were killed by then Datu Unsay town Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. and his henchmen.

The massacre has been described as the “worst single attack on press freedom in recorded history and the worst spate of election-related violence in the Philippines since the martial law era.”

There is a need to “pass a law that would set aside a day to commemorate victims of extralegal killings, including the victims of the Ampatuan massacre, to stress [government’s] resolve to fight impunity and to honor the memory of those who perished by rejecting impunity as a state policy,” Roque said in introducing his bill.

Roque held a press conference at the House of Representatives with the wives and mothers of the massacre victims, all of whom lamented the slow wheels of justice.

READ: No justice yet for victims of Maguindanao carnage

“All we need is one conviction to send them all to Muntinlupa,” Roque said. He remains the families’ counsel. RAM