Opposition congressmen to PNP: What’s an invitation, what’s an arrest?

What is an invitation and what is an arrest?

Opposition congressmen asked the Philippine National Police (PNP) yesterday to clarify the distinction between the two so people being accosted by policemen would know if they were being invited for questioning or actually facing arrest.

Minority Leader Francis Escudero noted there have been several instances in which critics of President Arroyo were "invited" by the police and then detained.

He said several months ago, long before the President issued Proclamation 1017 declaring a state of national emergency, former defense secretary Fortunato Abat, former budget secretary Salvador Enriquez Jr. and former ambassador Roy Señeres were invited to Camp Crame, detained and subsequently charged in court.

The same thing happened to former PNP chief Gen. Ramon Montaño and to Rep. Crispin Beltran of the party-list group Anakpawis, he said.

He added that the most recent case of a police invitation that led to an arrest involved Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel of the party-list group Akbayan.

Quezon City policemen took Baraquel into custody and brought her to Kamp Karingal on Wednesday minutes before dispersing Akbayan protesters at the Welcome Rotunda along Quezon Boulevard.

She was "arrested" for illegal assembly, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita was quoted as saying.

Police officials tell a different story, however. They claim that policemen removed Baraquel out of harm’s way before the dispersal.

The Akbayan representative told her colleagues on Wednesday night hours after her release that it was clear to her that she was arrested, and not invited for questioning or taken out of harm’s way.

She said she was manhandled, forced into a police car and brought to Camp Karingal, headquarters of the Quezon City Police District (QCPD).

Baraquel and two other militants who were apprehended and dispersed by police during separate rallies early this week will file multiple charges on Monday against a number of police officials, including the chief of the QCPD.

In a news conference, lawyer Ibarra Gutierrez of the UP Institute of Human Rights and legal counsel of Akbayan, said they will be making the rounds of the Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office, Office of the Ombudsman, Commission on Human Rights, People’s Law Enforcement Board, and National Police Commission to file criminal, civil and administrative charges.

Gutierrez said that all policemen involved in the violent dispersals of peaceful demonstrations at Tomas Morato Avenue in Quezon City last March 6 and on International Women’s Day last March 8 at Welcome Rotunda would be named as respondents. — With Katherine Adraneda