25 years after, justice for Mendiola massacre victims still nowhere in sight

25 years after, justice for Mendiola massacre victims still nowhere in sight

In reaction to Secretary Ricky Carandang’s statement that there is “no practical point” in reopening the investigation as it has already been “resolved,” the relatives of the victims replied, “How could it have been resolved when no one has been punished? Now that the son is in power, all the more we have to press for justice.”
By RONALYN V. OLEA
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – When 74-year old Virgina Aribe began to talk about the day her daughter Adelfa was killed, her body shook involuntarily from grief. Tears flowed like a river.

On January 22, 1987, Adelfa, then only 19 years old and fifth of Virginia’s ten children, asked permission from her mother to go to Mendiola, a few meters away from Malacañang, to join a protest action to demand genuine agrarian reform from the administration of Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino.

“Before she left that day, she picked up a bamboo, wrote her name and put it somewhere in the rice field where we used to work,” Virginia said in Filipino in an interview with Bulatlat.com. “I did not know it was her way of saying goodbye.”

Adelfa was one of the 13 farmers who were killed when policemen and soldiers opened fire at the protesters.

“Cory promised us she would do something to help us achieve justice. We have been waiting, but up to her death, she had done nothing,” Virginia said. A few days after the massacre, Virginia, along with relatives of other victims, went to Malacañang to talk to Mrs. Aquino. Twenty five years hence, no one has been held responsible for the carnage.

L-R Teresita Arjona, Virginia Aribe, Josephine Dumanico and Purita Yumul set foot on the Mendiola bridge, the site where their loved ones fell 25 years ago.(Photo by Ronalyn V. Olea / bulatlat.com)

A day after the massacre, Mrs. Aquino ordered the creation of the Citizens’ Mendiola Commission headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Pedro Abad Santos, according to Philstar.com’s timeline of the massacre.

In March 1987, the commission recommended the filing of criminal charges against all armed military and police officers on duty when the massacre took place. It also recommended compensation for the victims.
On Jan. 20, 1988, the survivors and victims’ families filed a class suit against the government and certain police and military officers for damages amounting to P6.5 million (then amounting to around $260,000). Among the respondents were former President Fidel Ramos, who was, at that time, the defense secretary; former Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff Gen. Renato de Villa; former Western Police District (WPD) Superintendent B/Gen. and now Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim; Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, then chief of the Philippine Marines; B/Gen. Brigido Paredes, former Marines commandant; Col. Edgar dela Torre and Col. Romeo Monfort; and former Philippine National Police Chief Cesar Nazareno, then WPD deputy superintendent.

The following month, the House Committee on Human Rights recommended the expeditious payment of compensation to the victims.

In May of the same year, the Manila regional trial court dismissed the class suit. The petitioners filed a motion for reconsideration but were denied, with the court citing that the State did not file a waiver of immunity from suit..... MORE

Source:  Bulatlat.com

URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2012/01/22/25-years-after-justice-for-mendiola-massacre-victims-still-nowhere-in-sight/