Fight for Rights

When should we say that human rights have been violated? To be accused and arrested illegally is one manifestation of violation but to be tortured is a much bigger and more inhumane issue.

A battalion of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) were deployed to arrest the 43 health workers on February 6, in a farmhouse in Morong Rizal. The health workers were handcuffed, blindfolded and were detained at Camp Capinpin. They were deprived of food and sleep.

The AFP alleged that they were members of the New People’s Army (NPA). They also claimed that workers were undergoing training for bomb-making and that bomb-making materials were found under their beds. The military stick to this allegation even it was found out that among those arrested were doctors, one of which is a senior citizen. The AFP went to the extent of producing a witness who also claimed that those arrested were members of the NPA.

When the Supreme Court ordered the military to show the detained health workers, they refused, adding another lie that they discovered a plan by the NPA to get the detainees out of jail.

The claim of AFP was disprove by the following statement by a doctor in a press conference held at the UP College of Medicine:

“The only weapon that a health worker carries with him in the so-called battlefield is the stethoscope for the doctor, the sphygmomanometer for the nurses and the cotton balls for the other community health workers, and their only common enemy is the disease that threatens the community,” said Dr. Bu C. Castro, spokesman of the Philippine Medical Association and president of the Alliance of All Health Organizations of the Nation.

An illegal arrest , being tortured, denial of visitation rights even from the government’s own Commission on Human Rights, the concoction of pieces of evidence and witnesses, the refusal to honor the order of the Supreme Court. All of this exhibits violation of human rights.

Therefore, it is indeed important that all Filipino people should support the defense of the rights of Morong 43. If it happened to health professionals who are training community health workers to provide care to the poor, it could happen to anybody.