“State security forces continue to perpetrate with impunity extrajudicial killings, torture, forced disappearances, illegal arrests, and detention based on trumped-up charges”
By DANIEL ASIDO
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – Political prisoners assailed the Marcos Jr. administration, saying it has continued the same policies that have wreaked havoc on the lives of the Filipino people as the human rights community here commemorates the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War on Saturday.
“The recently installed but illegitimate Marcos Jr. government continues to implement the same repressive and fascist policies and practices of the previous regime, as well as the same anti-people and anti-national social and economic programs that have wreaked havoc on our people’s lives and pushed them to further resistance,” they said in a statement released under Kapatid, a support organization for families and friends of political prisoners.
Among those who signed the statement are detained consultants of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in the peace talks such as Rey Casambre, Frank Fernandez, Reynante Gamara, Vicente Ladlad, Adelberto Silva, among others, who are currently detained at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig.
Read: Political prisoners who fought dictators then and now
Read: Timeline | Attacks on peace consultants under the Duterte administration
“State security forces continue to perpetrate with impunity extrajudicial killings, torture, forced disappearances, illegal arrests, and detention based on trumped-up charges. The reactionary government continues to callously and shamelessly deny all these publicly, just as it denies the existence of political prisoners and the longstanding policy and practice of criminalizing political offenses,” they added.
The prisoners also noted that in the fourth cycle of the Universal Periodic Review on the Philippines “many countries did not take the GRP report at face value” and instead expressed concern over the worsening human rights situation in the country.
Political prisoners also assailed the dire jail conditions, with those detained living in inhumane conditions. They noted that jails in the country have been operating at a critical level with at least 2,000 percent overcapacity. This they attributed to the politically-motivated and drug-related arrests under the previous administration.
“The detainees not only suffer inhumane living conditions, but they also suffer these for an unjustly and unreasonably extended period of time,” the statement read.
Read: Life Behind Bars: How women political prisoners are treated under the Duterte administration
December 3 was declared as the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War by the International League of People’s Struggles in 2004 as a day of global action to protest the plight of political prisoners in various countries. (JJE) 
