Don’t Have the Man You Want, then
Convict the Man You’ve Got
Danilo Reyes
What Fernando Obedencio and Haron Abubakar have
in common is that they were both arrested in 2005 in General Santos
City. Both were 25 years old, accused on the grounds of planted
evidence, and both were tortured by the police to gain a confession.
What they don’t have in common is that they were picked up in
separate incidents; and while Obedencio is now a free man—nine years
later—Abubakar is still languishing behind bars waiting for another
appearance in court.
But the most bizarre thing that they do not have in common is that
Obedencio still has the legal identity that he had when he was
arrested while Abubakar has, through torture and falsification of
court documents, legally become a person that he never was, is not
now or ever will be.
While this may be the stuff of fiction, it is not surprising in the
Philippines, however, as fiction is limited by the imagination
whereas reality only has the boundaries of the cruelty of law
enforcement officers and the extent they will go to in order to get
a conviction.
Fernando Obedencio |
Obedencio was an active human rights advocate
from the Blaan tribal people in southern Mindanao when he entered
prison; but when he emerged on June 23, 2014, he was a 34-year-old
lost soul.
The court held that the marijuana presented to the court as evidence
was not the same sample that they claimed to have confiscated from
Obedencio, and his lawyer argued successfully that someone had
planted the illegal drugs on his motorcycle and he was forced to
admit they were his.
When asked how he spent his time in prison, Obedencio said in jest,
“In prison, you must know how to entertain yourself. Otherwise, you
end up either crazy or gay!”
However, he also admitted to bad bouts of loneliness and said that
he worried profoundly about his family.
While Obedencio can now look back and joke about his life in prison,
Abubakar is still nursing his strong sense of injustice over what
the police have done to him.
Haron Abubakar |
He belongs to the Maguindanaoan tribe and was a
farmer. When he was arrested, he was riding a motorcycle with
another man, who was about to be wed. The police stopped them at a
checkpoint. Abubakar and his companion were forced to get off their
motorcycle, and the police started torturing them on the street in
broad daylight.
When asked about what happened nearly nine years ago, he still has a
clear memory.
“They shoved me to the ground. They stepped on my face hard with
their combat boots and rubbed my face in the ground. My skin peeled
off. At the police camp, they extracted a confession from me and
forced me to admit I was somebody else,” he said.
The person whom the police wanted Abubakar to admit to being is
Ariel Bansalao. He is the person actually accused of robbing and
murdering a passenger in a bus.
But he is still at large.
To justify Abubakar’s arrest, the police presented a witness in
court to testify that he was Bansalao, but the witness could not
speak. He was not able to affirm or deny the police version of
events.
The police totally ignored compelling documentary evidence and
testimonies from people who knew Abubakar and affirmed that he was
not Bansalao.
Together with the prosecution, the police succeeded in amending the
official court documents and were able to declare that Abubakar was
Bansalao so the trial could continue.
“They made me a different person; they gave me a new name. My real
name became an alias,” Abubakar told me when I visited him in
prison.
Abubakar has been tortured by the police, who forced a false
identity on him, concocted by amending the court documentation.
Before the law, he has actually become the person whom the police
want him to admit to being.
It is outrageous that Obedencio was forced to endure nearly nine
years in jail. He could have spent a productive life outside of
prison.
Now the question is, How long will Abubakar have to spend behind
bars?
In the Philippines, what Obedencio experienced in prison, and what
Abubakar is still enduring, is no longer surprising. They are
commonplace occurrences. Perhaps they are so common that these
stories hardly evoke anger and protest anymore.
What makes it scary is not the wrongness of these cases but how
perhaps our minds have become so collectively desensitized that even
the utter meaningless of this deprivation of liberty has become
tolerable and acceptable.
* Danilo Reyes is the deputy director of the Asian Human Rights
Commission (AHRC), a regional non-governmental organization
monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong
Kong-based group was founded in 1984. More information is available
on AHRC’s web site at <http://www.humanrights.asia>.
This article was
first published in the Sunday Examiner in Hong Kong on
Aug.10, 2014.
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