EDITOR'S NOTES - TFDP's 40th Anniversary edition

"Diwata ng Karapatang Pantao" Artwork by Mr. Emil Yap. Mr. Yap is a Filipino visual artist widely known for his murals,installation and public art. He is recognized for their uniqueness and intensity, and are strongly influenced by social realism artistic movement and eastern art. 

This year, Task Force Detainees of the Philippines celebrates our 40^th anniversary. In line with the celebration, we bring you this special issue of Philippine Human Rights Update. This issue is composed of chosen articles that have been published on PHRU and other publications that the organization has made through the years.

We have tried to choose articles that could give not only a background of what TFDP, as an organization, has been through for the past 40 years but also its involvement in struggle for human rights in the country.

In The History of Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, an article based on the narrative statement of Sr. Mariani Dimaranan, SFIC in 1990, she tells the story of how the organization came to be and her personal experiences in documenting human rights violations during the very tumultuous time of Martial law. Sr. Mariani has been a part of TFDP since its beginning. She has been the Chairperson from April 1974 up to 1996 and was Chairperson Emeritus until her death in 2005. Her name has been synonymous with the organization, especially in the international human right community.

We published the homily, Apatnapu given by Sr. Crescencia Lucero, SFIC, Co-Chairperson of TFDP on the thanksgiving mass to start off the whole year celebration of TFDP’s 40^th anniversary., She painted a picture of the human right situation as documented by the organization through different presidents, regimes and policies that has continued the oppression of our countrymen and the challenge to continue the fight for human rights and human dignity.

In TFDP’s Reaffirmation of Principles, an article originally published in 1987, after the end of Martial law and beginning of the Aquino regime, TFDP provides a clarification of its continuing role in documenting human rights violations and reiterate our commitment in the adherence to the principles of human rights as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

To provide a more detailed explanation for these principles, we have included an educated piece by staunch human rights lawyer, Senator Jose W. Diokno in Human Rights Makes Man Human.  It gives a rationale of sorts to why we, as human rights defenders do what we do and our responsibility to fight for human dignity.

We included two highlight cases as well. These cases were documented by the organization during the martial law period. The first case is of the Negros Nine. The Negros Nine case shows how repressive and abusive those in power and how the Marcos government and his cronies tried to vilify those who were trying to help the sugar farm workers in Negros even to the point of making up charges against them.

The second case is the enforced disappearance of Carlos “Charlie” del Rosario, an instructor from Philippine College of Commerce (now Polytechnic University of the Philippines). Though the article was published in PHRU in May 1986, when the Aquino government was already in power, Charlie disappeared way back in 1971, even before martial law was declared. It was a plea, that with the reinstatement of a new government that there might be a more serious effort to find those who were disappeared. Sadly, to this day, Charlie del Rosario is still disappeared.

Most of all, we have included two articles that voices the sentiments of those we service, the political detainees and prisoners. The Notes behind Bars columns written by Mr. Alan Jazmines gave a venue for the reactions and ponderings of those who are incarcerated. We choose the first article he wrote that echoed the longings of a political detainee/prisoner for freedom not for one self but to continue serving the people and his last article for the column as well, written just days after the snap election that declared Marcos the winner, where he predicted that the battle is indeed not over. Not long after the article was written, Edsa People Power happened ending the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. He was later freed when all political detainees and prisoners were given amnesty.

The relevance of our distant history, such as these articles could be reflected in our current human rights situation. The impunity for the crimes of human rights violations committed by previous administration is reflected in continuing human rights violations by the current one. Our responsibility to document, seek justice and combat these travesties remains.