Are there Political Detainees?

In a nation-wide radio-TV statement on December 11, 1974, Pres. Marcos said: 

“In our jails today, there are 5,234 people under detention in direct consequence of the martial law proclamation. 4,069 of these are ordinary criminal offenders. 1,165 are political detainees.”

After this initial admission of the existence of political detainees, the President in a speech before the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of the Philippines on June 3, 1977, denied that there were any political detainees in the country. 

Sometime in December, 1974, however, the President used “political detainees” to mean “those charged under the anti-subversion act or with rebellion, sedition, or insurrection and other crimes against the security of the state.”

Again, in June, 1977, Mr. Marcos used “political detainees” to mean “those held [only] for their political beliefs,” and not on suspicion that they might have done a criminal act.

Clearly, in both senses that the President has used the term, there are political detainees—in the military stockades and jails, detention centers, and even in military hospitals throughout the country. As of May 27, 1978, there were 721 political detainees officially accounted for in the country’s various military stockades. 

In Camp Bicutan alone (now Camp Bagong Diwa) as of August 25, 1978, there were 71 political detainees. An exact accounting is difficult to accomplish because in most of the provincial jails, the political detainees are mixed with non-political elements.

There are also 30 political detainees on the missing list and an unidentified number are being held incommunicado in various intelligence safehouses.

As a direct consequence of martial rule, the government has imprisoned hundreds of suspected activists, communists, NPA and MNLF members; peasants and barrio people fighting for the land they till: the urban poor and factory workers struggling for better living conditions; priests, Christian organizers, and the religious working for social justice; and legal oppositionists.

“Amnesty” and the Political Detainees

The martial law administration, time and again, has announced a policy of “national reconciliation and unity” and a program of “normalization”. In pursuit of these avowed goals, the government, to date, has already issued 3 amnesty decrees. 

P.D. 124 was issued on Feb. 2, 1973 for members and affiliates of “subversive” organizations as defined in section 4 of R.A. 1700 (Anti-Subversion Act). This was followed up by P.D. 1182 issued on Aug. 21, 1977 for persons who may have violated the “provisions of R.A. 1700 as amended by P.D. 885 and those who have committed crimes against public order.” The latest amnesty decree, P.D. 1429 was issued on June 10, 1978.

Under these 3 decrees, however, not one person under detention has been freed by virtue of an amnesty! It is true that there have been grants of amnesty but these were given to persons long released from detention.

Many political detainees who applied for amnesty way back in 1973 and 1974 still remain under detention.

In spite of 3 amnesty decrees, why has the government withheld the grant of amnesty to political detainees, most of whom are being indefinitely imprisoned without formal charges? The very prefatory declaration of P.D. 1429, the latest amnesty decree, underscores the fact that “one of the perceived obstacles to the achievement of national unity is the detention of persons who have been charged with such crimes as subversion, rebellion, sedition, etc.”

All the 3 amnesty decrees issued so far are clearly conditional and selective decrees. They contain disqualification clauses that can be so broadly interpreted to virtually disqualify most of the political detainees. Both P.D. 1182 and 1429 disqualify from amnesty those who have “promoted, maintained, or headed a rebellion or insurrection.”

This built-in, all-embracing disqualification clause can be loosely interpreted to exclude just about every detainee. In actual practice, for example, all applications for manesty must first be approved by the intelligence agencies—the very agencies which have the least interest in releasing the detainees.

The practice contradicts the very essence of an amnesty decree which is supposed to be a political act of wiping clean the slate of the past for the sake of national unity. The fact that the military, particularly thru its intelligence agencies, can override the larger political considerations which are the very justification for an amnesty decree, puts to question the government’s call for national unity.

It is evident that the amnesty decrees issued so far by the government appear more to be short-term solutions to immediate political pressures, rather than well-planned political decisions to concretize a genuine normalization program and national unity. In this regard, the case of the latest amnesty decree P.D. 1429 is indeed revealing.

The issuance of P.D. 1429—a “broadened” version of the two previous amnesty decrees—was the result of political pressure on the administration following the anomalous April 7 IBP “elections”. The martial law administration not only had to contend with the massive loss of its credibility among the people; but also had to answer charges from 114 US congressmen attacking the regime for the sham conduct of the IBP election.

The US congressional rebuke was not to be taken lightly by the government in view of its pending requests for increased military aid and economic loans from the US government and US controlled banks and financing institutions.

In the light of this political turbulence and in view of the heightened opposition to the administration, ways and means of maintaining the credibility of its normalization program had to be found. A broadened amnesty decree was one such opportune step to meet this immediate political problem. The first prefatory statement of P.D. 1429 stresses the need “to forget the bitterness of the last election and unite for the sake of the national interest.”

Actual practice, however, has not matched announced proclamations.

The People’s Campaign for the Release of all Political Detainees

The release of all political detainees is a necessary condition towards normalization and for the restoration of the people’s basic political and civil liberties. The political detainees are the incontestable proof of an abnormal regime which denies the basic rights and liberties of its people.

The unified efforts to restore the basic political rights of the people must necessarily work for the immediate release of all political detainees through a general amnesty decree. It is but one of the minimum tests for the regime’s avowed normalization program and call for national unity.

The organized efforts for the release of all political detainees should center on two basic demands: 

1. 1. The demand for a general and unconditional amnesty for all persons who may have violated the laws on sedition, rebellion, insurrection, and the provisions of the Anti-Subversion Act, as well as of related Presidential Decrees, General Orders, and Letters of Instruction. 
   2. The demand for the immediate release of all political detainees who have been detained for not less than one (1) year whose cases have not yet been concluded due to no fault of their own or who have not been charged in court. The violation of their constitutional right to speedy trial has foreclosed the authority of the regime to further prosecute them.

The people from all walks of life must be fully mobilized to further strengthen the growing organized campaign for the release of political detainees. Only a few weeks ago, a petition with 12,000 signatories was sent to the President demanding the granting of a general amnesty for all political detainees. This is not enough but it is a step in the right direction.

The people must make full use of every opportunity to confront the regime with the full force of its just alternatives for freedom and democracy. But this can be done effectively only if the people are fully organized and mobilized for a just cause. Indeed, the freedom of political detainees and the people is too precious a choice to be left to the caprice of a few.

(From Camp Bicutan) ●

This article was first published in the Collegian’s September 6, 1978 issue, with the title “The Campaign to Free all Political Prisoners.”