Pursue rights violation cases vs GMA, minions
By Satur C. Ocampo
At Ground Level | The Philippine Star
“Our gathering this morning is an opportunity to further assess the
strengths and weaknesses of the present criminal justice system, and to
come up with new and timely initiatives concerning the delivery of
justice… Your decisions and the steps you take have implications
integral to our democracy.”
That’s how President Aquino defined the objective of the First
National Criminal Justice Summit, a laudable initiative by the
Department of Justice, which he addressed last Monday at the Manila
Hotel. We missed being informed of the summit’s output because the media
coverage focused on P-Noy’s frontal tirades against the Supreme Court
and Chief Justice Renato Corona.
Nonetheless, the President raised a point highly relevant to today’s
observance of Human Rights Day: the injustice inflicted by Ferdinand
Marcos’ martial law regime upon his father, Ninoy Aquino, the opposition
leader who was later assassinated and now regarded as a hero.
Ninoy and Jose W. Diokno, then both senators, were arrested and held
for two years in isolated military detention. Whereas Diokno was freed
without being charged with any offense, Ninoy was dragooned into trial
and conviction by court martial on trumped-up murder and related common
criminal charges.
P-Noy summed up that ignoble procedure thus: “The dictatorship
exerted all efforts to skew justice and run roughshod over my father’s
human rights.”
With that flashback, P-Noy emphasized that he had sworn “to do
justice to every man” in executing the laws and “to make certain that
what transpired during martial law does not happen again, and ensuring
that anyone who so much as attempts to repeat the same offenses is held
accountable.”
Fast-forward to the plight of 356 political prisoners all over the
country, who have been on a week-long fast/hunger strike to press for
their immediate release. They have been charged, like Ninoy, with
trumped-up common criminal offenses. The reality is that they were
arrested for holding political beliefs different from those approved by
those in power..... MORE
Source: Bulatlat.com
URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2011/12/16/pursue-rights-violation-cases-vs-gma-minions/
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