Fil-Am accuses military men of torturing her

MANILA, Philippines – Filipino-American activist Melissa Roxas lived to tell her story of abduction and torture so the whole world will be aware of human rights abuses in the Philippines. Roxas, who said she was abducted and tortured by the Philippine military, appeared before the public for the first time and recounted her harrowing experience in the hands of her captors in May. "Although it’s still very difficult to talk about the incident, I wanted to tell the truth about what happened because I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anyone else ever again," she said in a press conference in Los Angeles, California. The event was shown simultaneously online on Sunday morning (Manila time). “I want the world to know what happened because the Philippine government and military should not get away with what they did to me…and they cannot get away with what they did to many other people," she said. Roxas is an American citizen of Filipino descent. In between sobs, Roxas read portions of her sworn affidavit submitted to the Philippine Supreme Court, where she filed a petition for the writ of amparo days after she was released. A writ of amparo, Spanish word for "protection," was conceived to solve extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances in the country in recent years. It denies respondents, such as government authorities and private individuals and entities, the defense of simple denial. The military, however, denied responsibility for what happened to Roxas. In phone interview with GMANews.TV, Armed Forces of the Philippines spokesperson Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner Jr. said they had already conducted an internal inquiry and that the military had nothing to do with Roxas' alleged torture and abduction. "We initiated a probe upon learning of the issue last month, and our investigation showed that the 7th Infantry Division in Tarlac was not responsible for anything that happened to Ms. Roxas," Brawner said. 'No rights here' On the afternoon of May 19, 2009, Roxas was on a medical mission in La Paz, Tarlac in northern Philippines when 15 armed men believed to be members of the military took her and two of her companions – John Edward Jandoc and Juanito Carabeo – forcibly. She said they were taken to a van and were blindfolded and handcuffed on the way to what she presumed was Fort Magsaysay, a military camp in Nueva Ecija province. Roxas related to American and Philippine media that she was "interrogated" and “beaten up" several times. She repeatedly demanded for her lawyer and stressed that she had rights too, but her captors only told her that the concept of "rights" was nonexistent. “I demanded for my lawyer and then he told me that even a year will pass, no lawyer would be seeing me and told me repeatedly that it was because of people like me who are costing the government so much money and people like me are the ones who are making it difficult for the government," she said. Accused of being a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines – New People’s Army (CPP-NPA), Roxas said her captors told her that they were "tools of God for making rebels return to the fold." Roxas, breaking into tears, said she retorted that “my God does not torture people." “I was having a streaming thought that I was going to die there and then. They held my feet and my hands down and doubled up plastic bags were pulled down on my head and face and closed on my neck and I started to suffocate and I could not breathe anymore and I was seeing white and thinking I was going to die and then he released the hold and I could breathe, but I was faint and weak," a portion of her affidavit read. She added that she had told her abductors that she was only a writer and a volunteer, but the beating continued. When she was being tortured, Roxas said one of her captors asked her if she was ready to die and made threats that "before they killed people, they made them pee and shit from pain." Dark place She said she was held captive for six days and on her release on May 25, she was given a SIM card through which her abductors would communicate with her and monitor her actions. She added that her abductors also warned her not to tell anyone of the incident, especially the human rights group Karapatan. Roxas said in her affidavit: "RC [abductor] told me that they will be monitoring all my actions and something bad will happen to me if I do not cooperate...that made me more afraid and I did what they told me after they took off my blindfold and I was dropped on the sidewalk and I was facing a wall and I did not move around even just to turn my head as I was very afraid that they would get me again." She was then dropped off about a hundred feet from her relatives’ house in Quezon City. On May 28, two days after she surfaced, Roxas sought court protection by filing a petition for the issuance of the writ of amparo at the Supreme Court. The high tribunal granted her plea and ordered the Court of Appeals to conduct the proceedings on the case. Roxas then returned to the United States on the first week of June. Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) secretary-general Renato Reyes Jr. told GMANews.TV in a phone interview on Sunday that Roxas’ life was under threat here in the Philippines. In the press conference, Roxas said she still carried the trauma of her ordeal, and that relating the experience was like returning to "that dark place." Still, she said that she needed to speak the truth because it would keep “silence and fear from drowning me." United Nations Lawyer Arnedo Valera said they would bring the matter against the Philippine government before the US State Department and the United Nations. In a phone patch statement, Valera said that by refusing to acknowledge Roxas’ alleged torture, the Philippine government under the Arroyo administration would only perpetrate the culture of impunity. Roxas, a founding member of the cultural organization Habi-Arts in Los Angeles and Southern California representative for Bayan-USA, went to the Philippines in 2007 to pursue human rights advocacy full time. This was amid an acute human rights crisis in the Philippines that includes reports of rampant extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, illegal arrest, torture, and summary executions, Bayan said. In 2005, Roxas participated in an international fact-finding mission investigating human rights violations throughout the Philippines under the Arroyo administration. - GMANews.TV