Aw, come on, AFP!

Last Monday six members of the “Morong 43” health workers filed a P15-million civil suit for damages against former President Gloria Arroyo and ranking military officers for their illegal arrest on Feb. 6, 2010 and alleged torture inside a military camp. Upon reading the news I remarked to myself, “About time they did that!”

But upon reading the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ reaction to the filing of the case, I muttered, “Aw, come on, AFP, there you go again!”

Why? Because the AFP’s basic defense is to assert that the health workers were arrested (and treated as such in captivity) because they were members of the New People’s Army.

One of the respondents, Col. Aurelio Baladad, 202nd Philippine Army Infantry Brigade commander, was quoted in the news thus: “It is their right to file a complaint. We are ready to answer the charges. We maintain that they are NPA.”

AFP spokesman Brig. Gen. Jose Mabanta Jr. essentially stated the same: “Let’s put it this way. Some of the Morong 43 have been monitored to have joined the rebel forces. It is up for everyone, for the people to decide on the merits of the case.”

The AFP alleged that four of the women health workers had been seen (by “civilian witnesses,” Baladad claimed) with members of the NPA last month in Rizal and Batangas. Baladad said such witnesses’ accounts would help their defense in the case.

From these statements you can get the message that if the victim-complainants were indeed NPA members, it was all right for the military to have tortured them.

Of course, it wasn’t and will never be all right.

The AFP has been denying the torture charge since the Morong 43 raised it when Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, then Commission on Human Rights chair, interviewed them at Camp Capinpin in Tanay, Rizal on February 9, 2010. De Lima came out of that visit accusing the military of having subjected the health workers to “psychological torture.”

Besides torture, the health workers complained that under custodial interrogation for extended periods day and night they were denied the right to counsel, and deprived of sleep, rest, and food. I can believe it, having undergone the same maltreatment by state security forces years ago.

Moreover, as a senior member of the House of Representatives human rights committee, I was barred at the Camp Capinpin gate from visiting the Morong 43 despite their immediate relatives’ appeal that I do so, as I had done for countless political detainees in various detention centers. Similarly refused entry was Rep. Liza Maza.

We were barred from visiting presumably because the military persisted on regarding Liza and me as leaders of the CPP-NPA, ergo, as “enemies of the state.” No matter that, on July 1, 2007, the Supreme Court had ordered the dismissal for lack of merit of the rebellion case against us and four other progressive party-list representatives, referred to as the “Batasan 6.”

Apparently, despite the AFP claim that under the Noynoy Aquino government it has changed orientation - that it now adheres strictly to observing human rights and international humanitarian law, in contrast with its record as violator of the same in past administrations - the military’s counterinsurgency mindset is obdurately unaltered. Pag NPA ka, lagot ka! Subjecting those arrested as suspected NPA members to torture, both physical and psychological, is par for the course.

This mindset goes way back to the martial law period, or even before that dark era in our nation’s life. I can’t forget the roguish remark in Pilipino of then 1st Lt. Rodolfo “Agui” Aguinaldo, my main torturer as well as of numerous other detainees suspected of being CPP-NPA leaders and members in the 1970s: “Walang human-human rights sa akin. Trabaho lang ito!”

(May he rest in peace. In 1993 Aguinaldo, then governor of Cagayan province, tried to make amends with me after I was freed from my second military detention in 1992. Still this has to be said: he was unscrupulously brutal as a loyal soldier to the martial law regime.)

Whereas other torturers would blindfold me so that I couldn’t identify them, “Agui” pulled away the blindfold, glared at me and boomed, “Look into my eyes, I’m gonna give you hell!”

And he did. I stared into his eyes. He pummeled my body with his fists and shod feet (the sole of his combat boots left a red welt on my chest for days) without hearing a cry of pain. That drove him even madder. He cursed, pulled his hair and stomped his feet. Then he left in a huff, leaving me handcuffed to the leg of a bed.

By their accounts, the Morong 43 members may not have suffered what I went through. But that’s not the point. Torture in any form or degree, inflicted on anyone under any circumstance, war or peace, is prohibited in all countries under international law.

Torture is now a criminal offense under our laws. The military officers charged in this case should be thankful they are only being required to compensate the victims.