Not just about money

On April 17, 2012, we from Selda (Samahan ng mga Ex-Detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto) trooped to the Philpost office at the Quezon City Hall to mail hundreds of letters to President Aquino and to all 23 senators, urging them to immediately pass the Marcos Victims Compensation bill which was initially filed in Congress in 1998.

The House of Representatives had approved on third and final reading House Bill 5990 (An Act Providing Compensation to Victims of Human Rights Violations during the Marcos Regime) on March 21, 2012.

Martial law survivors decry the Senate inaction on Senate Bill 2615, its version of HB 5990. The last Senate action on record was when the Technical Working Group formed by the Senate Committee on Human Rights discussed the bill on Jan. 19, 2011.

Forty years is a lifetime. This is how long the victims of the Marcos regime, which started in 1972, have waited for justice. Indemnification is one way of compensating the survivors of martial law abuses. But unless the senators and President Aquino act on it now—with a keen sense of fairness—“justice delayed, justice denied” continues to be the victims’ lot.

In the hundreds of letters we mailed last April 17, Selda called on the senators to include in the Senate substitute bill the following:

Recognition of all 9,539 victims and class suit plaintiffs, and 24 other individuals, all of whom filed and won a case against former President Ferdinand Marcos in the US Federal Court and in the Swiss Federal Supreme Court on Sept. 22, 1992 and Dec. 10, 1997, respectively, as victims of human rights violations of the Marcos dictatorship.

Inclusion of Selda as one of the members of the commission that will be created and tasked to implement the enacted law.

Removal of the section requiring that “for a human rights violation to be compensable, the killing, torture or infliction of physical injuries must be committed against a Filipino citizen peacefully exercising civil or political rights.” Under this provision, anybody can be summarily excluded by a mere allegation that he/she had been involved in a “nonpeaceful” means of exercising his/her civil or political rights.

Besides using the snail mail, the already elderly human rights victims of martial law ventured into the use of new media to spread their call for the passage of the Marcos Victims Compensation bill. Selda members sent text messages through their cell phones.  Some of them tweeted and did “shout-outs” on Facebook.

Some tagged the President and some senators to their calls.

It is not just about the money. This is about the government denouncing human rights abuses during martial law and taking a vow that never again shall such abuses happen. We have waited 40 years, we cannot wait forever.

—BONIFACIO ILAGAN,

vice chair,

Samahan ng mga Ex-Detainees

Laban sa Detensyon

at Aresto (Selda),

selda.phils@gmail.com