“Reprimands against few government officials charged in the said cases can be viewed as mere slaps on the wrists, considering the sufferings endured by Nasino and NUPL and the gravity of the offenses. Full accountability for those responsible in violating their rights can be hardly gleaned from these decisions.” – Karapatan
By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – Progressive lawyers decried the recent dismissal of charges against law enforcement officers sued by urban poor organizer and activist Reina Mae Nasino. According to the Ombudsman, there is no probable cause and substantial evidence against the respondents.
Nasino filed the charges for the cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment that she suffered while in detention and during the wake of her infant daughter, Baby River.
Read: Until the last minute, political prisoner Reina Mae Nasino denied of ‘proper mourning’
Read: Jail authorities ask court to shorten grieving mother’s furlough
In its Joint Resolution dated Jan. 16, 2023, the Office of the Ombudsman absolved officers from the Manila City Jail, the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP), and the Manila Police District of criminal and administrative liability for the premature separation of Baby River from her mother Nasino as well as the ill-treatment that she endured during the wake and burial of daughter.
Meanwhile, the Ombudsman found Jail Chief Inspector Maria Ignacia Monteron, officer-in-charge of the Manila City Jail Female Dormitory, guilty of violating the sections of the Expanded Breastfeeding Promotion Act of 2009. She was meted the penalty of reprimand for failing to establish a lactation station within the Manila City Jail Female Dorm.
In a statement, the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) said they “firmly maintains that the poor standards and ‘force of circumstance’ invoked by respondents, which fall short of the Standard Minimum Rules on the Treatment of Prisoners (Mandela Rules) under international law, demonstrate their deliberate and serious indifference to the plight of Reina Mae and Baby River.”
The NUPL asserted that the police “would never be justified in hijacking Baby River’s funeral procession and preventing their supporters from holding a peaceful assembly in support of mother and child.”
According to the Ombudsman, “the respondents neither imposed a punishment not authorized by the regulations nor inflicted (authorized) punishment in a cruel and humiliating manner.”
“They prevented the complainant from doing certain acts under authority of law, not by violence, threats, or intimidation. They did not violate her rights as a detainee,” the joint resolution read, adding that the alleged acts do not constitute torture or other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.
It would be remembered that Baby River died more than a month after she was separated from her mother. The court denied Nasino’s plea to allow her to breastfeed and take care of her child for at least a year.
During her visit to the wake of her daughter, Nasino was handcuffed and was prevented from speaking to the media. Massive deployment of fully armed law enforcement officers was also seen at the venue of her daughter’s wake, which was described by supporters as an “overkill.”
The respondents argued that these are justified acts in accordance with the existing rules and regulations of handling persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) and because of Nasino’s status as “high-risk PDL” with alleged connections to the leftist groups.
“Reina Mae, who has since been acquitted after more than three long years of unjust detention, and Baby River, who would have been three years old now if she was just given a modicum of a chance to live a healthy life that she deserved as every infant does — born of ‘left-leaning’ mothers or not — are testaments of how society and its institutions can be both inhuman and callous, detached from realities in blighted prison walls. And the far greater tragedy is that their legal recourse leaves their mouths agape in frustration,” the NUPL said.
Karapatan, meanwhile, expressed alarm on what they call “disturbing trends that further illustrate the dire inadequacy, of domestic accountability mechanisms, or lack thereof, in the Philippines, amid the recently-issued rulings of the Ombudsman and the Court of Appeals and the worsening human rights situation in the country.”
Karapatan cited this recent decision of the Ombudsman on Nasino’s complaint as well as the decision on NUPL’s complaint on red-tagging and other violations against its officers and members.
Read: Read: Ombudsman reprimands red-taggers Parlade, Badoy
“Reprimands against few government officials charged in the said cases can be viewed as mere slaps on the wrists, considering the sufferings endured by Nasino and NUPL and the gravity of the offenses. Full accountability for those responsible in violating their rights can be hardly gleaned from these decisions,” the group said in a statement.
The group said reprimands are disproportionate penalties or forms of punishment for the violations of their rights.
“How can there be justice when years after they filed the cases, no one is brought to jail for these acts? How can there be a message that there should be non-repetition of these acts, when the perpetrators are not made fully accountable?” they said.
The group also decried the recent decision of the Court of Appeals (CA) denying the petition of habeas corpus of the families of the disappeared activists Dexter Capuyan and Gene Roz Jamil.
“The CA’s denial of their loved ones’ petition for habeas corpus and the continued disappearance of the two are telling signs that the existing domestic legal remedies are largely ineffective for victims of enforced disappearances,” Karapatan said.
They also said that while the CA granted the petitions of writs of amparo in the cases of disappeared organizers Elizabeth Magbanua, Alipio Juat, Maria Elena Pampoza and Elgene Mungcal, it beg the most important questions – “where are they, who among the State actors took them, and why have they been not surfaced?”
Aside from these recent court decisions, Karapatan also cited the dismissal of murder charges against police and other government officials in the killing of trade union leader Manny Asuncion and fisherfolks activists Ariel and Ana Mariz Evangelista.
“These as well as numerous other cases where victims and families have managed to file charges against the perpetrators of rights violations, even at great risk to their lives and security, but are left empty-handed,” Karapatan said.
Karapatan said the state of injustice prevailing under Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration is worsening. Clearly, they said, there is “no real justice in real time.”
“We are one with the victims and their families in upholding their right to substantive justice and to ensure full accountability of those in power who committed crimes against them. We are one with the families of Dexter Capuyan and Gene Roz Jamil de Jesus, as well as the families of all victims of enforced disappearances, in demanding that their loved ones be surfaced and afforded the right to redress,” the group said. (RTS, RVO) 
