Political prisoners thank visitors, top PNP officials

We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to the more than 30 advocates of human rights for  political prisoners and for the exploited and oppressed people, who paid us a special visit last Dec. 26.

We were very happy and heartened by their visit and by the affirmations of our shared hopes and visions of freedom and victory being realized in the near future.

We were especially touched by their determination to see us despite all the efforts of the head of Camp Crame’s custodial center and its intelligence and inspection arm to prevent the visit by making all of us believe that the camp had been placed on “heightened alert,” and thus the earlier approved special visit had been canceled.

Our visitors were allowed to see us only after two hours of heated exchange with the two PNP officials and only after our visitors were able to produce documents showing that the special visit had been confirmed by higher PNP officials, who denied as well the existence of the so-called “heightened alert order.”

We also thank Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, PNP chief Director General Nicanor Bartolome and Chief Supt. James Andres Melad, Camp Crame commander and also the head of PNP HQ Support and Services. The latter also personally came to greet us and our visitors, and to make sure that the visit would turn out fine.

Our visitors were supposed to have been allowed to stay with us from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but because of the machinations of the custodial center chief and the intelligence officer, they were able to see us past 11 a.m. They were also asked to leave by 3 p.m.

The visit, though, turned out successful. But there was another problem. Some publicly available reading materials brought to us by our visitors—several issues of Pinoy Weekly and a few copies of a critical primer on Oplan Bayanihan—were held by the custodial center’s intelligence and inspection officials and turned over for censorship by the custodial center chief himself. The reading materials have since remained in his hands.

This, notwithstanding our being National Democratic Front (NDF) peace consultants who should not have been arrested and detained,  and whose right to confidentiality of communications with the NDF, its peace panel and all other entities should be respected. This, despite a recent letter from the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to the chief of the custodial center, criticizing him for banning the delivery of “Free All Political Prisoners” postcards to us. The CHR took our side when we complained about the custodial center’s insistence on censoring such materials in violation of our political and human rights.

—ALAN V. JAZMINES,

EDUARDO O. SARMIENTO

and EDUARDO R. SERRANO,

c/o Karapatan Public Information,

[email protected]