Last September, just as a week-long hunger strike of political
prisoners was nearing yet another frustrating ending, some unconfirmed
and cryptic piece of news had filtered out of the Palace, alleging to the
effect that Philippine jails were now being divested of political prisoners.
But the President had not in fact made any announcement acceding finally to the
strikers’ call for a general, unconditional and omnibus declaration of amnesty
to free all political prisoners in the country – it turned out that it was just
the Presidential Spokesperson giving official word that in the first place, as
far as the administration was concerned, political prisoners simply did not exist.
It was not however your usual fare of Malacanang farce; Edwin Lacierda
this time was not at all the stammering, choking bureaucrat screwing up on an
otherwise perfect lie. It was, rather, a highly ingenious and studied
performance which, for all its supposed terseness and indifference, still
managed to come across as a perversely powerful warning – that as a matter of
state principle, political dissenters shall invariably treated in no other
context except in relation to common, even heinous crimes. Instead of general
amnesty, what government had in essence declared was general policy.
The unabated incidence over the last couple of years of government
critics, activists and revolutionaries being arbitrarily arrested or abducted,
tortured and slapped with fantastic non-bailable criminal charges, attest to how
seriously such policy of political persecution has so far been put to actual
practice by the present dispensation. Indeed with the full repressive force of
existing laws and state machinery thoroughly committed to the purposes and
methods of the current Pentagon-designed counter-insurgency program Oplan
Bayanihan, the US-Aquino regime is building its own legacy of human rights
violations and state terror – now with a record 99 documented cases of extra-judicial
killings, 10 enforced disappearances, and 107 political prisoners arrested
under its watch. The military, police and prison systems have likewise recently
conspired in a number of separate attempts to carry out the transfer of certain
political prisoners from civilian jails to military camps to further punish and
break their militant response to the debilitating conditions of their
incarceration.
Hundreds of political prisoners nationwide including myself, are once
again on a hunger strike to condemn the continued prevalence of illegal arrests
and detention, and the heightened repression and “custodial militarization” of
political prisoners. Under the US-Aquino regime, general,
unconditional and omnibus amnesty for political prisoners can be granted
only through the strength of people’s clamor and widespread support. Freedom can only be achieved through unrelenting struggle.
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS!
Ericson L. Acosta
Political Prisoner
Calbayog City
Sub-provincial jail
Western Samar
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