Senator Leila de Lima. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / NIÑO JESUS ORBETA
A year in jail has only made Sen. Leila de Lima’s spirit “burn bright and hotter.”
This was the senator’s message on Friday to her supporters who gathered at the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) office in Quezon City to call for her release from detention on charges she insists were concocted to silence her.
Minority senators on Thursday filed a resolution calling for De Lima’s release from “unjust” detention at Came Crame in Quezon City.
Only the minority signed Resolution No. 645, among them Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon and Senators Francis Pangilinan, Bam Aquino, Risa Hontiveros and Antonio Trillanes IV.
De Lima is awaiting the outcome of the illegal drug trading charges filed against her.
‘Pained by reality’
“As her colleagues at the Senate, we are pained by the reality that a member of this chamber is locked up in jail on trumped-up charges when she should be here with us, engaging in productive discussions, legislating laws, and serving her constituents and our country,” the minority said in a statement.
The event at CHR coincided with the launch of an e-book, released in the senator’s Facebook page, compiling some 100 of De Lima’s handwritten dispatches from her detention cell.
“One year after having me illegally detained, they (Duterte administration) not only failed to suppress my spirit, they made it burn brighter and hotter,” De Lima said in her letter, read to the gathering by Rep. Erin Tañada.
The senator’s brother, Vicente, said that while the family was “very sad because she certainly does not deserve to be in jail,” they were “very proud of her.”
While international groups describe her as a “prisoner of conscience” or a “political prisoner,” Vicente said “she’d rather call herself a prisoner of hope.”
No partisanship
CHR Chair Jose Luis Gascon, in a speech during the gathering, sought to clarify that the activity was “not a question of partisanship.”
“Regardless of our political views, human rights, truth and justice must always prevail. It is not a matter of partisan or political color. Rather, it is about fighting for the dignity of all persons,” Gascon said.
The minority senators said their colleague was detained as a result of her investigation of President Duterte, when he was still Davao City mayor and she was chair of the Commission on Human Rights, on allegations he was behind the Davao Death Squad, which reportedly killed criminals in the city.
As a senator, De Lima launched an inquiry into the spate of alleged extrajudicial killings of drug suspects under the Duterte administration.
They recalled that the President himself told the media on Aug. 11, 2016 he would publicly destroy a female government official and later started his public attacks against De Lima. —WITH A REPORT FROM AFP