Palparan prosecution: A step to check impunity

Finally retired Army Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan Jr. — tagged as “the Butcher” for his long record of human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of political activists, human rights defenders, and innocent civilians – will be brought to court to answer criminal charges against him.

 Captured last Tuesday after three years of defying the court’s warrant of arrest, he will be arraigned Monday before the Bulacan Regional Trial Court in Malolos on charges arising from the June 2006 abduction-disappearance in Hagonoy of former UP students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno.

The charges were initiated in 2011 by the victims’ parents, Erlinda Cadapan and Concepcion Empeno, aided by the National Union of People’s Lawyers. With Palparan now in custody, the court (which has conducted the trial with two other accused, an Army colonel and a sergeant), will restart by having the prosecution call the witnesses who will testify against him.

Two other charges of kidnapping and arbitrary detention have been filed at the Ombudsman’s Office against Palparan and other military officers. Probably more cases may be filed in the wake of his arrest. Yesterday, relatives of victims met to discuss other legal cases that could be raised against him.

Also probably the charges against Palparan for the abduction-murder of Mindoro activists Eden Marcellana and Eduardo Gumanoy in 2003 can be re-filed with a better chance of success. Thrice did the victims’ families file criminal complaints at the Department of Justice under then Secretary Raul Gonzalez, but these were all ignored.

 Gross brutality attended the Marcellana-Gumanoy case: their near-mutilated bodies bore multiple wounds and bruises, their faces were smashed. (As a member of the House human rights committee then, I joined a team that inspected the bodies dumped in a ditch in Bansud, Mindoro Oriental.)

Such brutality was compounded by the fact that when abducted, the victims were on a mission to investigate abuses inflicted on barangay tanods in Gloria town (Mindoro Occidental) by a military unit under Palparan’s command. This impelled UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings Philip Alston, who came to the Philippines, to highlight the abduction-murders in his 2007 report.

In 2008, the UN Human Rights Committee issued a report finding Palparan to have violated the human rights of Marcellana and Gumanoy. It recommended his prosecution by the Philippine government, but neither the Arroyo nor the Aquino government has acted on the case.

At least 39 extrajudicial killings were recorded in Mindoro Oriental by the human rights alliance, Karapatan, when Palparan headed the Army’s 204th Brigade. (Other EJK cases attributed to Palparan: 36 in Eastern Visayas, 71 in Central Luzon.)

A Catholic priest who worked with environmental advocacy groups in Mindoro at the time, Fr. Edwin Gariguez, has documented these cases which he said he had submitted to the military. Now the executive director of the CBCP National Secretariat for Social Action, Justice and Peace, he has volunteered to testify on the documents to support Palparan’s prosecution.

“During his reign of terror,”Gariguez wrote in a CBCP website post, “Palparan lumped together all those in progressive movements, even people from the Church doing justice advocacy for the poor, and they were targeted for assassination. They were tagged as dissidents and terrorists on Palparan’s list, and his list even included me.”

In another post, Fr. Gariguez quoted his diary entry 11 years ago, on his 40th birthday:

“My 40th birthday will be marked in history as an unforgettable period of brutal liquidation of leaders of the progressive movements in the province of Mindoro. People suspected of being rebel sympathizers are tortured, decapitated, or summarily executed, and in a number of cases, with their ears and tongues chopped off or eyes plucked out!

“It is horrifying but a great honor as well for me to be included by Jovito Palparan in his “terrorist” liquidation list (no. 6, to be precise!). It just proves that I had not been a fence-sitter all my life, that I had been perceived as a threat to the powers-that-be, and that I have cast my lot among the poor of Yahweh.”

On the Cadapan-Empeno case, if it’s properly handled by the prosecution, Palparan can be successfully proven guilty of the abduction-disappearance and related crimes, such as torture and inhumane treatment.

The key testimony that can pin down Palparan is that of Raymond Manalo, a 22-year-old Bulacan farmer when abducted with his elder brother Reynaldo by Palparan’s men in February 2006. Both escaped from captivity in August 2007.

In the hearings at the Court of Appeals for a writ of amparo (one filed by him and the other by the Cadapan and Empeno parents), Manalo provided compelling eyewitness testimony pinpointing Palparan as being personally behind the crimes. He described how he saw the two women, both stripped naked, being tortured and molested in a military camp.

The CA ruled to grant the petitions.

When the respondents appealed to the Supreme Court, then Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno, who penned the decision denying the appeal, affirmed Manalo’s testimonies as credible —“clear and convincing.”

 Successfully prosecuting Palparan can break the climate of impunity on human rights violations in the country.

* * *

Email: [email protected]