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By ELLEN T. TORDESILLAS IN trying to control damage wrought by the President Duterte’s verbal rampage against the United Nations in the early hours Sunday, Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay, Jr. on Monday chose to put the blame on media. “It was done in the wee hours of the morning and he was very tired,
By CAROLYN MERCADO
DESPITE the advent of a new and popular administration and President Aquino’s promise to end all human rights violations, the country has not seen the last of them. Torture, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances continue with impunity. They continue to be widespread and systematic, with most victims tagged as “enemies of the state” and the majority of the suspects identified as state security forces.
A STRONG civil society and a vigilant press have been the country’s most effective weapons against extrajudicial killings, in the face of government’s failure to both prevent and prosecute such cases, a human rights lawyer said recently.
By NESTOR B. RAMIREZ
TAGBILARAN CITY—It was Gerry Cuñado’s third time to take the witness stand. But the grief that overcame him in court the morning of July 15 was as raw as what he first felt when his wife, Liezelda, a women’s rights advocate, was killed in their home in Candijay town the night of July 3, 2006. She was 30 at the time.
By ARTHA KIRA PAREDES
IN olden times, churches were considered sanctuaries where even criminals could seek refuge from harm and arrest. That’s long in the past. In fact, churches may be among the worst places to commit a crime, especially when a wedding is taking place. On Dec. 16 five years ago, the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in New Manila, Quezon City became the site of blood spill and murder.
By MELVIN GASCON
SOLANO, Nueva Vizcaya—The Philippine National Police has released a second artist’s sketch of the possible gunman in the year-old assassination of a human rights lawyer and Liberal Party campaign manager here.
By ARTHA KIRA PAREDES
BANGUED, Abra—He spends his days in jail now, but former governor Vicente Isidro Valera once lived in a mansion on a mountaintop in Barangay Lingtan here from where he could gaze at the province of Abra, the kingdom he ruled for two decades. But since his arrest on September 2009, “home” to Valera has been the Bicutan Jail in Taguig City, devoid of all the comforts he once enjoyed as Abra’s head honcho.
By MELVIN GASCON
SOLANO, Nueva Vizcaya—Investigations into the murder of lawyer Ernesto Salunat Sr. have hit a blank wall and the police recently found out why: They were using a “grossly inaccurate” cartographic sketch of the accomplice’s face, and though a second sketch corrected the error, this second sketch had not yet been disseminated.
THE first cartographic sketch of one of the suspects in the assassination of human rights lawyer Ernesto Salunat Sr.
