Rosenda Lemita and Liezel Asuncion filed a case at the United Nations Human Rights Committee against the murder of their loved ones. The decision to file a case was not made lightly – it took three years of delays and disappointment from the justice system to push them to seek an international avenue.
By JUSTIN UMALI
Bulatlat.com
SAN PABLO, Laguna – “We are here again, in front of your agency [Department of Justice], because it has been over three years but you have given us nothing.”
Liezel Asuncion opened her speech, looking directly at the DOJ building in Ermita, Manila, during a protest led by human rights advocates in the Southern Tagalog region, November 8. Liezel is not a tall woman, and her voice shook while she spoke, but everybody stopped to listen to what she had to say.
“We are not here to ask for pity,” she continued in Filipino, “despite how pitiful your agency has made us become.”
Liezel is the wife of Emmanuel Asuncion, who was the spokesperson of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan in Cavite province. He was killed on March 7, 2021 during an operation of 17 policemen supposedly serving a search warrant against him.
Another woman was standing nearby, holding one placard in each hand. It bore the names and faces of Ana Mariz Lemita-Evangelista and her husband, Ariel Evangelista, who were also killed on March 7 as a result of a police operation. The woman was Ana Mariz’s mother, Rosenda.
Both Rosenda and Liezel filed a case at the United Nations Human Rights Committee against the murder of their loved ones. The decision to file a case was not made lightly – it took three years of delays and disappointment from the justice system to push them to seek an international avenue.
Three years, zero justice
The deaths of Manny Asuncion and the Evangelista couple form part of what is known as “Bloody Sunday” – considered the worst attack against activists in the Southern Tagalog region under the former Rodrigo Duterte presidency.
According to human rights group Defend Southern Tagalog, the simultaneous police and military operations during Bloody Sunday resulted in the deaths of nine activists and the arrest of seven more. The events of Bloody Sunday also led to the death of union president Dandy Miguel, and the arrests of activist Lino Baez in Quezon and Maritess David in Makati.
Officially, Bloody Sunday was the result of COPLAN ASVAL, an operation against supposed “Communist Terrorist Groups.” The architects of Bloody Sunday, such as then-Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Debold Sinas, then PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group Region 4A head Lito Patay, and then-Armed Forces of the Philippines Southern Luzon Command head Antonio Parlade, Jr. justified the violence by claiming that the victims ‘fought back;’ the worn-out narrative perfected by cops under Duterte’s so-called ‘war on drugs.’
In the three years since Bloody Sunday, justice has been elusive. The DOJ’s investigation under the auspices of Administrative Order 35 claimed that the officers operated under the ‘presumption of regularity.’ In other cases, the AO35 task force dismissed the cases because they could not find a ‘political motivation’ in the killings.
“The Department of Justice,” said Defend ST spokesperson Charm Maranan, “together with its AO35 committee, never made an effort to cater to the cases of the nine killed and seven imprisoned activists, except for the Asuncion-Evangelista cases that were left at a Petition to Review for a year.”
In Asuncion’s case, Liezel was told that the case was to be dismissed because she could not identify the names of the officers who killed her husband. “How can we identify people without name tags or IDs?” she asked. “It wasn’t as if they introduced themselves before they killed my husband.”
Similarly, the Evangelista cases were left floating for a year before being dismissed. “We wholeheartedly filed a case against the police who mercilessly killed my children and fellow organizers,” said Rosenda. “But it has been over a year and DOJ Secretary Boying Remulla has done nothing to help us achieve justice.”
A lack of faith, but not of hope
Rosenda stated that they have lost faith in the Philippine justice system. “But we hope that the United Nations can give us what the government could not,” she said.
Similarly, Liezel had nothing to say to DOJ Secretary Crispin “Boying” Remulla. “He had the gall to claim that he was Manny’s friend,” she said. “But what kind of friend would ignore us and delay justice?”
According to the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, who helped the Asuncion and Lemita families file the case with the UNHRC, all “domestic remedies have been exhausted” not for a lack of trying but due to a lack of commitment from the government to address the murders.
“What we see is a system designed to deflect, delay, and deny justice,” said NUPL Secretary General Josalee Deinla.
Defend Southern Tagalog also stressed that the UNHRC filing signified the “gravity of the state’s abandonment of justice and its complicity in shielding state forces through ‘legit police operations.’”
There is some hope that the UNHRC filing would push the Ferdinand Marcos Jr. administration to further prosecute Duterte, especially following revelations of P/Col. Patay’s involvement in Duterte’s war on drugs. However, Defend ST also noted that state attacks in Southern Tagalog never ceased following Bloody Sunday, noting the most recent arrests of David and Gavino Panganiban last October 27.
David, in particular, was arrested on charges relating to a police raid of the office of Alyansa ng Manggagawa sa Engklabo last March 30, 2021. According to the group, the police transformed the AMEN Office “into an armory” with the sheer amount of weapons planted by state forces.
“[Bloody Sunday] is part of a terrifying pattern of repression in the Southern Tagalog region,” the group stated. “We demand the Marcos Jr. administration cease its campaign of terror against activists and immediately bring those responsible for these murders to justice.”
“Our fight will not end until every life taken is vindicated and justice won,” said Maranan. “for no power nor position should ever be above the Filipino people’s rights and dignity.” (RVO)
