Anakpawis paralegal arrested when police took Echanis' body still in custody
MANILA, Philippines — Peasant groups on Sunday called for the immediate release of Paolo Colabres, the Anakpawis Party-list paralegal whom police arrested for obstruction of justice for watching over the remains of slain peasant activist Randall Echanis.
The arrest was part of a struggle for custody of Echanis' body, whose identity the Quezon City Police District said needed to be verified even though his widow Erlinda had already identified the body. The QCPD later in the week acknowledged the body was Echanis' after comparing fingerprints.
Although Echanis' body has been returned to the family and borught to the UP-Philippine General Hospital for examination, Colabres has remained in police custody.
The National Federation of Peasant Women (Amihan) slammed the paralegal's continuing detention, which happened just before QCPD personnel took Echanis' body from a funeral parlor that his family had picked.
"It is clear that the police are attempting to sidetrack his rights and justice in their continued detention of Pao. The police have been uncouth and disgraceful in their theft of Ka Randy's body, furthering the process for Pao's immediate release," Amihan national chairperson Zenaida Soriano said in Filipino.
“The police forces should be held accountable for their abuse of power. The state forces’ impunity despite thousands of cases of human rights violations especially under their Tokhang operations has cultivated the culture of violence against the poor and marginalized,” Soriano added.
Along with Amihan, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas pointed out that the extended detention of Colabres exposes him to possible coronavirus transmission.
"It is totally unjust and sinister for the PNP to keep Colabres in jail days after the confirmation of the identity and release of Randall Echanis' remains. The 'obstruction of justice' charge has been exposed to be clearly baseless, arbitrary, and even illegal. The Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit has so many delaying tactics, " KMP national chairperson Danilo Ramos said.
"Colabres continuing detention is sheer abuse of power and callousness on the part of the PNP. He will be spending a whole week of unjust detention, risking COVID-19 infection - for what, looking after a colleague’s' dead body?"
PNP: QCPD officers did nothing wrong
Speaking in an interview with CNN Philippines on Thursday, Police Brig. Gen. Bernard Banac, PNP spokesperson, defended the actions of the QCPD officers, saying they did nothing wrong when they took Echanis' remains from his grieving widow.
According to Banac, it was justified for the police officers to take the former peasant advocate's cadaver without a court order and arrest a paralegal for obstruction of justice because they needed to confirm Echanis' identity.
“At this point, we don’t see any lapses or violations on the part of the investigation body as always whenever there is an investigation ongoing. We always give them the presumption of regularity. We allow them to perform their task...In legal proceedings, in identifying a person, there are four disciplines involved. This may involve DNA, fingerprint analysis, odontology, dental records , and then anthropology or the human image analysis,” Banac said.
“We think they have done their job well to establish the identity of the person very clearly and surely and after having it identified properly through fingerprint analysis, and that’s [when] they came to that conclusion. That Manuel Santiago and Randall Echanis are one and the same person,” he added.
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