PHA-Exchange> PHM action: Support for Rep Satur Ocampo arrested in the Philippines

[Claudio]

From: maria at mundonica.com 




Responding to the call made by Delen de la Paz,  we have prepared
an urgent action. 
We urge you to send your letter of support to the office of Santur Ocampo (satur at bayanmuna.net) .


. 

Statement of support for Rep. Satur Ocampo Rep. Satur Ocampo, a staunch advocate of people's health issues in the Philippine House of Representatives and president of Bayan Muna (People First) Party, has been issued a warrant of arrest on 6 March 2007 for alleged murders committed in the province of Leyte twenty-two years ago.  These accusations are baseless. Ocampo was arrested on 14 January 1976 and was under military custody until 5 May 1985. It was impossible for him to be in Leyte in 1984 to supervise the purported killings.

The prosecutor and the judge refused to dismiss the case despite the above impossibility, among others. Bayan Muna, which topped the latest surveys for the party list elections getting 17% of the votes, sees the issuance of the warrant as a blatant violation of due process aimed at preventing Rep. Ocampo from campaigning for the May 2007 elections. The escalating harassment hopes to prevent Bayan Muna, which has gained the trust and support of millions of Filipinos, from again topping the 2007 elections, as it did in 2001 and 2004.  It should be recalled that Prof. Philip Alston, the  United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, declared in his initial report that "the executive branch (of the Philippine government), openly and enthusiastically aided by the military, has worked resolutely.to impede the work of party-list groups and to put in question their right to operate freely." He has emphasized that the military "remains in a state of almost total denial.of its need to respond effectively and authentically to the significant number of killings which have been convincingly attributed to them." Alston acknowledges "the problem of virtual impunity that prevails" in the country. 

Mr. Alston made these comments last month after an investigation into the continuing extrajudicial killings in the Philippines. Indeed, the harassment of Rep. Ocampo is only the latest brazen act in pursuit of the government's policy of political persecution, which has included the extrajudicial killings of 127 leaders and members of Bayan Muna since 20 January 2001; physical attacks and enforced disappearances; and the harassment by military operatives of members and sympathizers of Bayan Muna, coercing them to desist participation in the organization. 

These latest baseless charges are an attempt of the government to deflect criticism it has been receiving on the killings of leaders and members of progressive organizations. They come only a year after rebellion charges were filed against Ocampo and his colleagues, known as the "Batasan 6", when five of them resisted threatened warrantless arrests by holding out inside the House of Representatives for 71 days, while Rep. Crispin Beltran of Partido Anakpawis was abducted and remains detained by the national police.

 

We are extremely alarmed by this latest attack on a Philippine health advocate and want to support the right of many marginalized and underrepresented Filipinos to elect their representatives, via the party-list election system, and participate in the Philippine Congress. We therefore urge the Philippine government to put a stop to the unjust political persecution of Rep. Satur Ocampo and  Bayan Muna. 

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