"x x x.
If the Corona Supreme Court ruled the Truth Commission “unconstitutional” because it was planning to investigate and indict only the GMA regime, well, “Imprint” was more encompassing in its scope. According to the exhibit flyer, “the state of impunity in the country remains as prevalent as ever,” and describes the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo administration as nearly equal to the Marcos regime in corruption and abuse of power, as well as the “gross, systematic and brazen violation of human rights.” It zeroes in on GMA’s counter-insurgency campaign, Oplan Bantay-Laya, “which targeted leaders and activists of the democratic movement, human rights advocates and members of the media, the law profession and church people.” The statistics it presents are already familiar yet still mind-numbing: “1,206 victims of extrajudicial execution, 206 desaparecidos and thousands more victims of other forms of human rights abuse…”
But what unsettles and disturbs all the more is the plaint that “under the new administration of President Benigno Aquino III, the human rights situation, especially the situation of human rights defenders, has not changed,” and that “extra-judicial killings during the one and a half years of the administration have numbered up to 64…there have been 9 victims of enforced disappearances…342 victims of illegal arrests…347 political prisoners remain in jail.” The flyer cites the human rights group Karapatan as the source for these numbers.
x x x."
