Doctrine divides, Action unites

 

  August 2014

 

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
.
 

Home | School of Peace | Faith and Peace Archives | Photos and events | Who are we

e-mail : interfaithcoop@gmail.com