The Negros Island Political Prisoners (NIPP) are holding an island-wide protest fast on Thursday, March 30, to call for justice for all victims of Oplan Sauron and extrajudicial killings during the Duterte regime, and for an end of impunity.
On March 30 four years ago the Armed Forces of the Philippines-Philippine National Police launched the brutal Oplan Sauron 2, which led to the extra-judicial killings (EJKs) of 14 leaders and members of peasant groups in Canlaon City and the towns of Manjuyod and Sta. Catalina, in Negros Oriental, the NIPP said in a press release Wednesday, March 29.
Oplan Sauron was a highlight of the Duterte government’s brazen show of impunity, the group said.
Human rights groups Karapatan and Defend-Negros have documented around 100 incidents of political killings in Negros Island since early 2017, including those whom they consider as reliable supporters in their struggle to secure speedy trial and release, the political prisoners said.
Among those were human rights lawyers Ben Ramos, secretary-general for Negros Occidental of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers who was gunned down in 2018 in Kabankalan City, and Anthony Trinidad, who was shot fatally in 2019 in Guihulngan City, as well as Councilor Toto Patigas, secretary-general of the Northern Negros Alliance of Human Rights Advocates who was murdered in 2019 in Escalante City, and Zara Alvarez, Karapatan-Negros Occidental staff who was salvaged in 2020 in Bacolod City, they said.
Their untimely deaths ran parallel to the dramatic increase in the number of long-held political prisoners in Negros, which as of today have reached 141, or nearly 20 percent of all PPs in the country, they added.
“We PPs thus note with cautious hope the statement of DOJ Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla – in reference to the ongoing investigation on the Governor (Roel) Degamo assassination-cum-Pamplona massacre case – which acknowledges a pattern of impunity within the area that we did not sense before,” they said.
They hope the Degamo probe would open the way for the investigation of the scores of extra-judicial killings and other impunity cases against human rights defenders and ordinary Negrosanons deemed collateral damage in the government’s counter-insurgency campaign, the political prisoners added.
“We challenge the Marcos government, which is yet unable to prove in the domestic and international arena the truthfulness of its supposed commitment to human rights, to finally address with ample political will all the unsolved cases of salvaging and massacres in Negros and elsewhere in the country, including those committed during the Duterte regime,” they said.
“We also declare that this problem of impunity in Negros, this raging human rights crisis in the country, can never be solved through the Marcos government’s knee-jerk reaction of deploying an even greater number of combat troops in Negros,“ they added.*