32 out of over 300 political prisoners to be freed
The Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) has promised to release 32 political prisoners detained in various prisons in the country.
The releases slated between April 5 and May 4 form part of the confidence-building measures that GRP chief negotiator Silvestre Bello III relayed to the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) peace panel on April 2. The two panels met in Oslo, Norway from March 30 to April 3 for talks, the second since formal peace negotiations resumed in February.
Among those to be released are seven women prisoners (three of them nursing mothers) and ten minors as well as elderly and ailing detainees. One of them is Zenaida Llesis, who was pregnant at the time of her capture in August 2002. Llesis gave birth to her daughter Baby Gabriela in the Bukidnon Provincial Jail in 2003. Llesis and Baby Gabriela both suffer from heart ailments.
Prior to this, NDFP peace panel chief Comrade Luis Jalandoni strongly assailed the the GRP's failure to fulfill its commitment since 2001 to release the detainees. The political prisoners staged a hunger strike to demand their immediate freedom and express their indignation over the GRP's indifference to their plight. Zenaida Llesis was the first to go on hunger strike on March 29. She was followed on April 2 by nine other political prisoners in Quezon province and by 300 other political prisoners in various parts of the country who fasted until April 5.
Aside from the 32 prisoners whose freedom has been promised, there remain 278 other political prisoners in various prisons who have been purposely charged with criminal cases like murder and illegal possession of firearms to prevent them from posting bail and to mark them as criminals instead of political prisoners.
Following the latest round of clarifications between the NDFP and the GRP regarding the Supreme Court doctrine on the Amado V. Hernandez case, the GRP agreed with the NDFP's stand that those detained because of their political beliefs should not be categorized as criminals.
Among those that the GRP refuses to release are Donato Continente and Juanito Itaas who were captured and imprisoned because of their alleged involvement in the 1989 killing of Col. James Rowe, a "counter-insurgency" specialist from the US war in Vietnam assigned to the Joint US Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) in the Philippines. The US government has strongly objected to their release despite the fact that they are entitled to parole after having been imprisoned for over 15 years.
In a similar bind are the so-called "Mamburao 6"�farmers Manolito Matricio, Eduardo Hermoso, Ruben Balaguer, Mario Tobias, Joshua Ungsod and Gelito Bautista. They have been imprisoned since 1998 on charges of killing brothers Michael and Paul Quintos in Mindoro in 1997, even as the New People's Army has openly acknowledged responsibility for meting the death penalty on the brothers because of their grave crimes against the people.
Aside from the release of the 32 detainees, one other confidence-building measure by the Arroyo regime is its commitment to find ways to ensure and hasten the indemnification of 10,000 victims of the Marcos dictatorship using the Marcoses' sequestered wealth.
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