THIRTEEN years have passed since November 23, 2009, when 58 people — 32 of whom were media workers — were waylaid in Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao yet justice for their relatives remains in limbo. Worse, one victim has yet to be officially included as such in the case information.
In an online forum organized by the Philippine Press Institute (PPI) and the Journalism Studies Association of the Philippines (JSAP) last Friday, Emily Lopez, representing Justice Now, complained that they were not given timely updates on the case. Justice Now is an organization for the relatives of the victims of the massacre.
“Wala kaming natatanggap na updates sa kaso. Di namin alam kung ano na nangyari sa kaso,” Lopez said.
Although the relatives of the massacre victims have banded themselves into the Justice Now organization, Lopez bared that they have separate legal counsels. She said they have no lead special prosecutor.
“Noong na pasok si Harry Roque sa administrasyon ni Duterte, bumitaw na siya as legal counsel sa ibang mga kasama namin,” said Lopez.
Since those media workers killed in the massacre were the breadwinners of the family, Lopez said that most of them find it difficult to make ends meet thus making their quest for justice even more elusive.
“Hirap na hirap na po kami,” she said adding that most of the fund support to Justice Now has since dried up.
Killing the broken
Exacerbating the long-drawn case, one of the victims, photojournalist Reynaldo ‘Bebot’ Momay has yet to be officially included in the roster of the victim of the Ampatuan Massacre.
In an online interview on Monday, the daughter of Reynaldo, Ma. Reynafe Momay-Castillo rhetorically asked: “How do we kill the broken? Shoot down their fighting spirit.”
“I am indeed broken but capable. I am trying to survive for the sole reason that as a broken person, I don’t want my fight for justice (to) be killed further. I do not want to forget and be left without any purpose,” Momay-Castillo said.
She asked fellow relatives of the victims of the massacre and supporters to pray for their family for the soonest decision for the appeal she had filed before the courts to include her father.
Momay-Castillo said that in 2012 they filed for the inclusion of her father in the roster of victims which made the total number of victims at 58.
“Mao tuang apil mi sa kaso. I remember my mom taking the stand,” she said.
However, during the promulgation of the case on Dec. 19, 2019, the court dismissed the case of her father against the Ampatuan brothers for lack of evidence.
This prompted her and their legal counsel at CenterLaw to file an appeal of the court's decision before a higher court.
“We filed an appeal sa Court of Appeals sa January 2020,” Momay-Castillo said.
But despite the seemingly gloomy prospects, she still chooses to look at a brighter possibility of her appeal. Momay-Castillo thanked the lawyers of CenterLaw Philippines, especially mentioning Atty. Gilbert Andres “who share my vigor in never giving up in this case.”
“There is still hope and remedy being God the center of all these things, especially on my quest for justice,” she said.
Forgetting is not an option
In the PPI-JSAP online forum, Press Undersecretary Eugene Rodriguez vowed to keep Justice Now members abreast of the case from now on.
Although there have been no specific directives from President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr, Rodriguez said that the Marcos administration recognizes that “media is a vital pillar in democracy.”
“The Marcos administration will not forget,” he said.
In the same online forum, National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) chairman Jonathan de Santos said the Ampatuan Massacre should serve as a reminder of the important role of media in calling out the culture of impunity in the country.
“Hindi pa tapos ang laban. (The conviction in Dec. 19) ay partial justice lang. Dapat magbantay tayo na hindi na mauulit,” de Santos said.
The fight against impunity, he said, is making certain that those who commit violence against any Filipino are held to account.
“We need to keep on reporting the issues on impunity. We need to keep on working,” de Santos said.
On the plight of the relatives of the victims of the massacre, de Santos urged civil society supporters to raise funds for the families.
“If we need to pass the hat, we should do that,” he said.
For his part, NUJP Cagayan de Oro City Chapter chairman Bobby Lagsa said that when a journalist is killed and the perpetrators and their masterminds go unpunished, this emboldens others who plan to muzzle the press.
“We call on the Philippine government to bring the perpetrators of these killings to justice to end impunity,” Lagsa’s said.
International study
In coordination with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Libertas, a legal policy non-government organization, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) launched 2013 a research project that dissected the massacre case as a way to understand these issues and offer recommendations for reforms in the country’s judicial system.
The research project output is a book entitled “Maguindanao Massacre: Case Study for Breaking Impunity, Increasing Accountability, and Broadening Access to Justice.” It is a compendium of interviews, focus group discussions, and dialogues with “family members of the Ampatuan Massacre victims, key informants who are private or public prosecutors, officials from the security sector, relevant government agencies, and representatives of civil society organizations (CSOs) and media organizations.”
At the crux of the case study is the fact there is still no clear-cut definition of extrajudicial killing (EJK), especially for state players prosecuting the criminal act. The study posits that a good definition is important to set this specific criminal act apart from other crimes. It further suggests that this particular crime be called “unexplained killing” and “to let it cover both state and non-state perpetrators.” In this way, the study broadened its scope of coverage to be more inclusive of other similar cases of EJKs, not just in Maguindanao or Mindanao, but all over the country as well.
Red-tagging of this type of crime, or identifying specific cases for special attention, also puts “value” since red-tagged cases are more closely monitored by the justice department at the regional level. The label also attracts more public attention, thereby potentially increasing the confidence level of the witnesses. “It is suggested that red-tagging be done at the point of filing information in court and that red-tagged cases no longer be raffled. Aside from special handling by the prosecution, this will also facilitate human rights documentation and monitoring,” the case study reads.
The case study proposes that special courts be designated to hear this type of crime continuously. Study proponents also proposed – by way of citing one of the observations of its key informants — the resumption of peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, because “while peace talks are ongoing, extrajudicial killings are seen to slow down and become intermittent.” In order to further speed up the court processes on EJKs and other human rights violation cases, the case study also proposes there be mechanisms in the rules of court to allow the perpetuation of testimonies of witnesses.
According to the case study, key informants from both the government and civil societies agree that there should be an enabling law on command responsibility to exact criminal liability and for command responsibility to be applicable to all criminal offenses under the country’s Revised Penal Code. The case study also recommended that there should be “transparency in the conduct of internal investigations and in the military justice system.”
Presently, the rules on command responsibility in the Philippines cover only as high as two degrees. However, a respondent from the Philippine Army conceded that — with respect to civilian supremacy over state security forces — court martial will surrender the “subject and the case even if there is a separate crime or administrative case arising under the Articles of War,” provided that there will be clear parameters.
On Aug 30, 2011, the Senate gave its concurrence to the Rome Statute. The Rome Statute, among others, defines the coverage of the doctrine of command responsibility to all state signatories of the international.
“In this respect, a cohesive financial support program with support coming from various sources may be rationalized and administered just by one agency, perhaps the CHRP or the DSWD, so that the families need only coordinate with one agency, Requirements can be streamlined by such agency, so that the families need not undergo repetitive processes for screening, which merely add to the families’ difficulty and frustration,” the case study recommends.
As observed in the prosecution of EJK and other human rights violation cases in the country, testimonial pieces of evidence play a crucial role. When witnesses and families of massacre victims are killed, harassed, and oftentimes slapped with trumped-up retaliatory charges in court quicker than the respondents of the cases are arrested, then it negates the whole judicial process.
“Truly, the Ampatuan Massacre was an unspeakable crime. It represents all that is evil in our political system. It shows what is dysfunctional in our legal processes. The only good that can come out of it is that it compels us to train our sights on these infirmities, and galvanizes our resolve as a nation to address them. The above recommendations are made in this light, so that the lost lives of the victims may not be put to naught,” the case study reads in part.
