Fil-Am activist recounts 'ordeal' before CHR

MANILA, Philippines - The Filipino-American activist who alleged that she was abducted two months ago testified yesterday before the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), recounting her six-day “ordeal” and saying that she saw the faces of some of her alleged abductors who she could recognize if she would them again.

Melissa Roxas, 31, a member of Bayan-USA, tried several times not to break down while recalling her alleged abduction and torture by supposed military men during the CHR’s public hearing on her case.

She cried when she began narrating how she was dragged from a house in Tarlac into a blue van, where she was subsequently blindfolded and handcuffed and brought to an undisclosed place.

Roxas said 15 armed men suddenly barged into the house they were staying at in Barangay Bagong Sikat in La Paz, Tarlac in the afternoon of May 19 this year.

She said she and her two companions, Juanito Carabeo, in his early 50s, and John Edward Handoc, 21, were watching a popular noontime show when men brandishing long firearms and wearing ski masks forcibly took them.

Roxas recalled that a man in a maroon shirt was told to punch her as she vehemently refused to be blindfolded and gagged by a tape and repeatedly shouted her name, hoping that some other people around would hear her.

She said shouting her name as many times she could “was the only thing I can do” at the time.

“I kept ripping the tape the men were trying to put on my mouth,” Roxas said. “I don’t want to go with them. I don’t want to get in that van. They were holding me and punching me, dragging me (toward the van).”

“I was the last one (they hurled in the van). They had a hard time with me… They were too powerful for me,” she said.

Inside the van, Roxas said the man in the maroon shirt sat beside her and took off his ski mask, and at this point, she claimed she was able to see one side of his face.

“I said to him, ‘Maawa ka sa akin, kuya,’” recalled Roxas. Then the man subsequently put his ski mask back on and they blindfolded her.

She said she vomited while they were in transit. And in “my sense of time,” she said they probably traveled for about an hour, with a smooth ride on a concrete pavement and a bumpy road, similar to a graveled path, as they slowed down probably nearing their destination.

She said she walked barefoot all throughout because the armed men took her from the house without any slippers or shoes on.

While in captivity, Roxas said, “There were people always watching.” She said she heard radio communications, gunshots from a supposed firing range, and sounds from aircraft, an ongoing construction and goats.

Trembling and crying, she said her six-day detention inside what she believed was a military camp was tough and dangerous since she was subjected by almost ceaseless and hostile interrogation by her captors, prodding her to admit her association with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA).

“They were choking me, I couldn’t breathe… slapping me… punching me… hitting me on the chest… banged my head on the wall,” she recalled.

“They covered my head with a plastic bag… with the plastic sticking to my nose as I tried to breathe… when I wasn’t breathing anymore (for quite a long while) then they took off the bag,” she added.

Major Gen. Ralph Villanueva, commander of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division, failed to show up during the CHR hearing. His representatives said he was in Mindanao, visiting his battalion that was sent there.

Col. Leonido Bongcawil, chief of staff of Villanueva, and Lt. Col. Hernilo Barrios, a lawyer, said they could not believe what Roxas recounted before the CHR.