By CONG B. CORRALES
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – Former community organizers who had put up strong opposition against a repressive regime more than four decades ago have joined the call for the Aquino government to end impunity in the country.
Hugo “Ka Jerry” Orcullo, Melencio Cabaraban, and Armand Naul, who were part of the First Quarter Storm (FQS), took part in an indignation fast last Thursday, Dec 10, International Human Rights Day at the Press Freedom Monument here.
Orcullo, who lost his voice to laryngeal cancer, said he refuses to be “voiceless” while the culture of impunity continues, especially in Mindanao, referring to the continuing attacks on lumads (indigenous people) that have gone unpunished.
The Aquino government has been criticized for failing to take action on the killings of lumads in the south (see: Pangantucan killings: Survivor says massacre, military says encounter).
Orcullo said being old and ill is no reason for them not to be involved in the fight against impunity. “(It) doesn’t stop us from continuing the struggle we started in the first quarter storm.”
The FQS refers to turbulent first quarter of 1970, a period marked by demonstrations and other mass actions involving students, industrial workers and other groups protesting unemployment, high prices, low wages and the rise of the so-called Marcos cronies in business.
Orcullo is the current co-chair of Sahaman ng mga Ex-detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto – Northern Mindanao Region (SELDA), and Cagayan de Oro Press Club President.
SELDA is an organization working for the “unconditional release and humane treatment of those who are still in detention.”
“We are doing this call for an end to the culture of impunity in the country. We call on the Aquino government to free all political detainees,” Orcullo wrote on his magic slate.
The least the Aquino government could do in its final months, he said, is to act swiftly to render justice to all victims of media and lumad killings and other extrajudicial killings.
“The government and its elite-dominated politics remain moribund and once again, the poor electorates are given empty promises and are being bribed with money and material gifts and treated to an electoral circus that allows the corrupt among us to secure power and governance to perpetuate their selfish designs,” Orcullo said in a written statement.
In a separate interview last week, Alfredo “Ka Paris” Mapano, a political detainee at the Misamis Oriental provincial jail, said their repeated pleas for a general amnesty have fallen on deaf ears.
“Nahurot na ko’g hangyo ini nga gobyerno. Maghulat na lang mi sa sunod nga president. Lain man gug nga balik-balikon ang atong hangyo kung dili ga paminawon, (My patience with this administration is already running out. We will just wait for the next president. I don’t want to repeat my plea when no one is listening),” he said.