Cops took placards from mass-goers on Church request, PNP chief says
MANILA, Philippines — The chief of the national police does not consider it misbehavior that elements of Metro Manila police walked into a live mass to take the protest placards from one of the churchgoers on Monday because according to him, the church itself asked for it.
Speaking in an interview over ANC, Police Gen. Archie Gamboa said that the Philippine National Police had photographs showing that the two activists were "showing" their placards inside the church will the mass was ongoing.
"We just behaved in accordance to the request of the church We don’t just do things. That’s why I don’t consider that as a misbehavior [because] we have pictures to show that they were displaying the placards while inside the church," he said.
"It was only upon the call of the church. As a matter of fact, we were commended that doing so and maintaining peace and order in a religious activity... we were praised by no less than the archdiocese," he added in a mix of English and Filipino.
He did not specify which members of the church called upon the police to take the placards, while the national police has not released the photos mentioned by Gamboa.
Police Brig. Gen. Rolly Miranda, Manila Police District chief, also said in an earlier interview with ABS-CBN's Teleradyo that the churchgoers were displaying their placards during the mass, which they found "disrespectful." He added that they made sure to take the placards "before they could do what they planned to do."
The woman in question was a member of Akbayan which has since said that it intended to file charges over the incident. The country's top cop said they were free to do.
Gamboa urged the public to practice "utmost solemnity" in religious gatherings, saying: "People should be able to separate politics and religion. I'm a Roman Catholic, but when you're in a church, you should observe maximum solemnity."
'Newspapers were voluntarily surrendered'
Just a day before the president's penultimate State of the Nation Address, copies of alternative newspaper PinoyWeekly were also seized by police in Pandi, Bulacan where one community leader was also arrested without a warrant.
READ: Bulacan cops arrest community leader, confiscate 'subversive' newspapers
Their narrative was eerily similar: that they were simply asked to pick up the copies—which they called "seditious material" that "taught people to go against the government"—because they were being "voluntarily surrendered."
Both the confiscated placards and the seized newspapers, police said, had slogans against the new Anti-Terrorism Law and content against Rodrigo Duterte. But Gamboa denied that the law had anything to do with the arrests, asserting that the content of the placards is "entirely out of the topic."
Critics have long said that the controversial law could be weaponized to shrink the spaces and fundamental freedoms to dissent.
READ: Seizure of Pinoy Weekly copies nothing to do with anti-terror law — Gamboa
"It’s not even the placards, the contents, for which they were confiscated. The behavior in question was that they displayed it. That was not a show of expression of a religious belief. It’s some other thing," he said.
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