Category: Criminal law

Criminal law

Luisa Posa-Dominado, spokesperson, SELDA, missing for five days.

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 “Winnowing in the Wind” by John Dyer           

 

        She’s a bit frail, small-boned, 5 feet, small face and big glasses, big smile, they were early  at the airport a little after-lunch and have been waiting for me in their white pick-up and after the usual introduction brought me to a seaside restaurant where they fed me scallops, oysters, prawns, big crabs, fresh seaweeds, like any former activist and present-day activist, they’d done their homework — knew my weakness: seafood —  and in a moment we were in their office and I was pouring over their corporate papers, and that’s how I came to draft their affidavit-complaints against customers who had issued them dozens of bouncing checks. That was six years ago in  Panay. We met several times for those criminal complaints and got arrest warrants for those cases and even got a hold-departure order, they were small cases of bouncing checks that could easily be settled if the accused settled their accounts, which is the only interest of small-scale business people like herself.   Small-scale industry. Her name is Luisa Posa (she used her maiden name then), full name Luisa Posa-Dominado. She and her friends had been able to set up a cooperative and put up a sugar mill,  from grants from OxFam. They even supplied muscovado sugar, a sort of brown, fine, sugar, a lot more fragrant than white sugar, to the supermarkets in the cities. And since it was a cooperative, the returns that weren’t used to pay grants and upgrade equipment, were distributed to members. And that’s how,  they laughingly explained to me, they, former activists, became capitalists. She’s an ex-detainee, active in the protest movement during the Marcos years, was arrested and detained in 1989 with her baby daughter in tow, named “Maywan” because she was born on May 1.        

 

        

         She is still missing. She was abducted by armed men five days ago (April 12) together with her colleague Nilo Arado, after their vehicle, driven by Jose Ely Garachico, public information officer of Karapatan, was strafed with bullets. Garachico survived while Luisa Posa and Nilo Arado were taken.         

 

     

              When Bayan Muna first participated in the partylist elections, some of those who had helped Bayan Muna organize chapters in the islands were former activists, those who had “retired” from the movement and were going about their daily business of living. Her colleague in managing the sugar mill,  Siegfred Deduro, became one of the nominees of Bayan Muna in the first year that Bayan Muna participated in the partylist elections.              I don’t really know what happened here. Why they seized her. A few days ago, a friend told me that two sociology Ph.D students of U.P. were also seized, apparently based on old records from twenty years ago, that they were active in the protest movement against the Marcos dictatorship.       

 

           

        Marcos is long dead. When is this all going to end?               

 

                I know that the CIDG, based on experience, has the capability to identify culprits just based on a cartographic sketch. I know that they have a rogues’ gallery where they compare the carto sketch, then they show the witness the file of mug shots, and a witness would be able to identify the suspect. I know that the CIDG and people like Boogie Mendoza, because of their work, have assets and contacts in the underworld and among guns-for-hire, and can know, if something is afoot.                           

 

            They’re not just doing their job. Their Commander-in-Chief is not  specifically directing them to do their job and not giving any real instruction and deadline;  if the suspect is not from among their ranks  (like some satrap), they are able to produce results. But they’re not doing anything and witnesses who talk and describe and identify, get killed.                        It’s the end of another unfinished day and every day that a missing person is not found takes that person farther away from you. It’s the gentle quiet ones who are taken away from us.                            And everyday that insatiable people like Gloria and Mike Arroyo are allowed to stay in power one more day, is one more friend torn away from us.            

          Whoever took Luisa Posa-Dominado and Nilo Arado, please just bring them back.       

Criminal law

Child’s Play?

smallgun.jpg   “The kidnapping of a child, whatever may have been the reasons inducing thereto, is a crime of unusual gravity, of great perversity on the part of the person who commits it. Whether it be to cause him injury, and even if it were to do him good, it is always a step which attacks the holiest and most intimate affections and the most sacred rights. The law has at all times and in every country looked upon it with just severity. In Spain, kidnapping of children has been resorted in order to obtain ransom from the afflicted parents, or to employ the child as object of vile passions or to make it a puppet player, or the like, or for the purpose of imploring public charity…” [jurists Pacheco and Viada cited by the Supreme Court in People vs. Quirino Peralta, 8 Phil. 200, quoted and cited in Justice Ramon Aquino, Revised Penal Code (annotated)]

                The hostage-taking incident yesterday  is covered by the following provision. (in this provision, it is enough that any one of the circumstances enumerated, attended the act):                        

         “Art. 267. Revised Penal Code. Kidnapping and serious illegal detention. — Any private individual who shall kidnap or detain another, or in any other manner deprive him of his liberty, shall suffer the penalty of reclusion perpetua to death: 1. If the kidnapping or detention shall have lasted more than five days. 2. If it shall have been committed simulating public authority. 3. If any serious physical injuries shall have been inflicted upon the person kidnapped or detained; or if threats to kill him shall have been made. 4. If the person kidnapped or detained shall be a minor, female or a public officer.The penalty shall be death where the kidnapping or detention was committed for the purpose of extorting ransom from the victim or any other person, even if none of the circumstances above-mentioned were present in the commission of the offense.”       

     

        “In People vs. Akiran, 18 SCRA 239, it was held that even if the purpose of the kidnapping was to compel payment of the hospitalization expenses of the brother of one of the accused, the offense is still kidnapping for ransom.” (Aquino, supra, p.1333).

                “The element of restraint is present as to constitute kidnapping were a boy of tender age was taken from his home and placed under the control of the accused with the instruction not to leave until the return of the accused. The fact that the boy was allowed to play in the house where he was detained is immaterial, since he was practically a captive in the sense that he could not leave because he did not know the way back home and because of his fear to violate the instruction.” (People vs. Acosta and Bravo, 107 Phil. 360, cited and quoted in Aquino, supra, p. 1343).                 

           This being the election season, many politicians took advantage of the occasion by blaming their opponents for the dire poverty of our countrymen and the sorry state of our educational system.   In many cases, the hostage-taker was lionized as a hero.  2gun2.jpg Even by the parents of the victims themselves. (and i think only because their kids escaped unscathed; would they be as forgiving and understanding if those grenades exploded? But that is the point: the crime was consummated the moment those children and teachers were detained, at gunpoint, with grenades.)                                     

                (On the other hand, there ought to be a law against senators and candidates, celebrities, all those not authorized, entering the staging area (the scene of the on-going crime) and “negotiating” with the hostage-taker, no matter how “experienced” the may think they are. They endanger not only themselves but the hostages and the people around them.)                            

             I know. Your heart goes out for the hostage-taker. People are soft on him,  he is a victim of circumstance, it was the grinding poverty that drove him to detain the children.                             

               But he had choices that day; he could have chosen not to detain those children; he could have chosen not to point guns at them; he could have chosen to direct his anger not at innocent civilians but at those responsible for the lack of choices that grip many of our countrymen day by day.                             

               Those children that day did not have choices.                                                       

            He will do it again if given the chance. Others would.                                      

              I suggest it would be more productive to join movements that work for fundamental changes, rather than kidnap children and expose them to gunfire and shrapnel.