Rights body mulls hearing on raps vs Fil-Am activist

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) is mulling another public hearing on the alleged abduction and torture of Filipino-American activist Melissa Roxas this week in the wake of accusations hurled by former military general and Bantay party-list Rep. Jovito Palparan that she was actually once an armed rebel.

In a text message, CHR chief Leila de Lima said the conduct of another public hearing would be done “in the interest of thorough, objective, and balanced determination of the truth.”

De Lima said the constitutional body would order the production of the video and photographs shown by Palparan during his press conference over the weekend, and would also ask Roxas to give her side.

However, De Lima stressed that the issue before the CHR is the alleged abduction and torture of Roxas, and not Roxas’ alleged affiliation.

“Was she really abducted and tortured? If so, by whom? Where was she brought, detained and tortured? We must remember that freedom from torture is (an inalienable) human right. Under no circumstance, not even a state of war or conflict, can torture of anyone be justified,” she said.

Last Saturday, Palparan and another party-list congressman, Jun Alcover, of the Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy (ANAD), said Roxas is not a mere activist but once an armed rebel and that the ones who tortured her were not soldiers but her own comrades who were trying to prevent her from severing her ties with the communist movement.

Palparan said he received information that Roxas has been training in the country as an armed rebel since 2006.

On the other hand, Alcover said he received a letter supposedly from another female rebel, who said she had spent time with Roxas, whom she calls “Ka Aya,” in the rebel movement in Aurora.

Aside from the letter, Alcover said he also received photographs and video footage of Roxas while training with the communist rebels, enclosed in a package delivered to him early this month.

Alcover and Palparan also said that the militant groups backing Roxas were the ones who “coached” her to accuse the military as part of their “hate campaign.”

During a CHR public hearing last week, Roxas recounted her six-day “ordeal,” saying that she saw the faces of some of her alleged abductors who she could recognize if she would see them again.

Roxas, 31, a member of Bayan-USA, tried several times not to break down while recalling her alleged abduction and torture by supposed military men during the CHR’s public hearing on her case.

She cried when she began narrating how she was dragged from a house in Tarlac into a blue van, where she was subsequently blindfolded and handcuffed, and brought to an undisclosed place.

Roxas said 15 armed men suddenly barged into the house they were staying at in Barangay Bagong Sikat in La Paz, Tarlac in the afternoon of May 19 this year. She surfaced six days later near her uncle’s home in Quezon City.

She said she and her two companions, Juanito Carabeo, in his early 50s, and John Edward Handoc, 21, were watching a popular noontime show when men brandishing long firearms and wearing ski masks forcibly took them.

While in captivity, Roxas said there were people “always watching.” She said she heard radio communications, gunshots from a supposed firing range, and sounds from aircraft, an ongoing construction and goats.

She said her six-day detention inside what she believed was a military camp was tough and dangerous since she was subjected to almost ceaseless and hostile interrogation by her captors, prodding her to admit her association with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army.

Militant groups supporting her fight for justice suspect that Roxas could have been brought to Fort Magsaysay, the headquarters of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division in Nueva Ecija, since the area is a short distance from La Paz town.