CA hearing of habeas corpus petition

Karapatan: Free the 43 health care workers now!

Press Release
By KARAPATAN
February 13, 2010

QUEZON CITY  –  Human rights alliance Karapatan on Friday joins the relatives and different groups and organizations in support of the release of the illegally arrested 43 health workers, at the hearing of the petition for the writ of habeas corpus at the Court of Appeals.

The relatives filed a petition for the writ of habeas corpus at the Supreme Court and the high court’s First Division granted it on Thursday, ordering the AFP to present all of the 43 health care workers who were forcibly taken on February 6 in Morong, Rizal, before the appellate court.

“We welcome this response of the SC,” Karapatan Secretary General Lovella de Castro said. “The arrest and detention of the health workers are illegal and they should immediately be freed.”

Karapatan, however, also expressed its outrage over the AFP’s exploitation of one of the victims, Valentin Paulino, in their extensive propaganda campaign to vilify the health workers as members of the New People’s Army.

“We strongly condemn the AFP for putting Paulino under duress and forcing him to admit that he and the other victims are members of the NPA,” exclaimed de Castro. “We believe that, along with the other victims, Paulino underwent severe physical and psychological torture to coerce him to implicate himself and the other health workers.”

On Thursday, with Commission on Human Rights chairperson Leila de Lima, lawyers and doctors were able interview the victims inside Camp Capinpin in Tanay, Rizal. It was the first time, since they were forcibly taken and kept under illegal detention, that the victims were allowed to be visited by their legal counsel and doctors.

De Castro narrated that the AFP took Paulino from the Camp and presented him at a press conference in Tanay, Rizal that Thursday, without the consent or knowledge of the lawyers who were present. “The AFP delayed the lawyers and doctors from meeting all of the victims so that they can ‘steal’ Paulino,” she said. “And this is further proof that the military is again circumventing the constitutional laws and judicial procedures, and they are utilizing all dirty means to implicate the victims of fabricated criminal charges.”

De Castro also added that under detention in the Camp, the victims were locked up in individual holding cells, isolated from one another. The victims said that they were tactically interrogated by the soldiers every night, and that they were threatened that they, and their loved ones, will be harmed if they don’t ‘cooperate.’

Karapatan reiterated that this case is another blow to the Arroyo administration’s dismal record on human rights.