‘P10-B compensation for martial law victims inadequate’

MANILA, Philippines - The P10-billion compensation approved by Congress for martial law victims is inadequate and should not be a substitute for the $2 billion awarded to them by a Hawaiian court in 1992, two lawyers representing 10,000 human rights victims said yesterday.

“The United States Court ruled that each victim was entitled to about $200,000 – plus interest – from 1995. The Compensation Bill will only give each a small fraction of that amount,” lawyers Robert Swift and local partner Rod Domingo Jr. said in a joint statement.

They were reacting to an appeal by Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) chairman Andres Bautista to human rights victims that they give up their claim to the $2 billion to ease the process of repatriating P10-billion ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses stashed away in overseas banks. The money is being earmarked for victims of martial law under the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Law of 2013. Marcos died in exile in Hawaii in 1989, three years after he was ousted in a bloodless revolution in February 1986.

“The (Marcos) human rights victims were able to obtain a judgment from a Hawaii district court against the estate of Ferdinand Marcos, $2 billion. It is against Marcos. (The funds in) Singapore and New York, these are ill-gotten wealth. These belong to the Filipino people. These do not belong to Marcos. And therefore, they should be brought back to the national government,” Bautista said last week.

“We are constrained to disagree with chairman Bautista’s pronouncements. The Philippine government itself was legally liable for the human rights abuses suffered during martial law. Not just Marcos,” Swift and Domingo said in response.

“The abuses – torture, summary execution and disappearance – took place during the martial law years, 1972 through 1986. For some, compensation is 40 years late and still counting,” the lawyers said.

“No less than the Swiss Supreme Court ruled in 1997, in a case in which the Philippine government was a party, that: ‘The Philippine government is liable for indemnification of the victims, according to international law.’ And the venerable Sandiganbayan ruled in 2000 that it was unconstitutional for the Philippine government to settle the class judgment against Marcos and compensate the victims,” they explained.

“The victims obtained their almost $2-billion judgment the hard way: through nine years of arduous and hard fought litigation in the United States federal court where their attorneys had to prove every element of the heinous abuses committed during martial law,” they pointed out.

“They also had to prove damages. And then they had to prevail on appeal. All this they did, with no help from the Philippine government,” they said.

A group advocating empowerment of Muslim youth is also batting for compensation for Muslim martial law victims.

“It is highly unfair to exclude them in the compensation deal when they also suffered much from the bloody hands of the dictatorship,” Arsad Solaiman, chairperson of the Youth for Bangsamoro Genuine Empowerment, said in a statement posted on the website of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Solaiman said three persons died or got wounded each day in military operations from 1972 to 1979 particularly in Maguindanao, North Cotabato, Sulu, Basilan, and Lanao del Norte.

“How about the civilian victims of massacres perpetrated by government soldiers, will they be counted also as victims and entitled to compensation?” Solaiman said.

He cited the massacres of mostly Muslim civilians in Manili, Palembang, Patikul, Pata Island and Kauswagan.

The youth group urged concerned government agencies to work with the MILF in identifying Muslim human rights victims entitled to compensation.

On Sept. 22, 1992, Hawaii federal district Judge Manuel Real found the late strongman guilty of gross human rights violations and ordered his estate to pay the victims $2 billion in damages.

In 2003, the Philippine Supreme Court ruled that Marcos funds transferred from Switzerland are ill-gotten and must be handed over to the government. The decision upheld an earlier one made by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court.

Under the 1987 Constitution, all assets and wealth recovered from the Marcoses are to be used for the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law.

Meanwhile, supporters of the late dictator again defended his declaration of martial law in September 1972 and voiced opposition to proposals in Congress to include in school curricula lessons on human rights abuses during the Marcos regime.

“Even Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, former minister of the defense department of Mr. Marcos, attested and wrote in his book that the declaration of martial law was necessary,” Marcos loyalist spokesperson Cherry Cobarrubias told The STAR. – With Alexis Romero, Jose Rodel Clapano