Statement of Roy Erecre, arrested NDF consultant

(Below is a statement of Roy Erecre, NDFP Consultant for the Visayas, who was arrested last May 7, 2014. According to Luis Jalandoni, chairperson of the NDFP Negotiating Panel, Mr. Erecre "...holds an NDFP Document of Identification No. ND978243 under the assumed name Vide Alguna. He was issued a Letter of Acknowledgment as an NDFP consultant for the Visayas on 20 April 2001 by then GRP Negotiating Panel chairman Silvestre H. Bello III. The Letter of Acknowledgment states: "The above named person is entitled to the safety and immunity guarantees (JASIG) for the duration of the peace negotiations. You are hereby required to facilitate the safe conduct and free passage of the above named person."

In the interest of truth and fairness, may you give his statement a space in your publication. For more clarifications, you may also interview in person Mr. Erecre in his detention cell at Bohol District Jail in Cabawan District, Tagbilaran City. Thank you and more power! Marinet Pacaldo,Research and Documentation, Karapatan-Bohol.

Let me convey my gratitude for the opportunity to respond to baseless allegations and malicious innuendoes hurled at me by the AFP and its patrons.

Immediately after abducting me in my hometown, this government has kept me incommunicado by transferring me from one detention cell to another across the seas until finally jailing me in Bohol where I once studied and then learned the necessity and worked for the realization of a systemic revolution.  In the crucial time following my abduction, government agents denied me the right to counsel, as they interrogated and threatened and manhandled me. While locked up from public scrutiny, I was accused of trumped up charges and misrepresented as guilty felon through trial by publicity.

I didn't know then that having medical treatment with one's family physician translates to "island-resort hopping" of sorts in military mind, and that either constitutes a crime.  I and my aide were just surprised that morning of May 7, 2014, when intelligence operatives pounced on us while on our way for my follow-up check up for diabetes.

During my arrest, I was robbed of my personal belongings. Until now, my phone, journal, and flash drives haven't been returned.

All these because of my being a consultant to the peace panel of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in its peace negotiations with this government.  It is a role I have taken since Cory Aquino opened peace overtures after the EDSA Revolt.  Then and now, the duplicity of this government at feigning negotiations in order to gather intelligence information against its perceived enemies has reached scandalous heights.

Instead of respecting the agreements it signed with the NDF, this government is instead preoccupied in emasculating each one, especially the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law and the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees.    In fact, there are now 169 victims of extra-judicial killings nationwide since the beginning of Aquino's presidency, as documented by KARAPATAN.  This year alone, 19 human rights defenders were executed by government agents, including veteran people's lawyer and comrade Noel Archival.  There has also been continued crackdown on those involved in the NDF's peace panel.  Just weeks before, a similar, bare-faced attack on fellow NDF peace consultants Benito and Wilma Tiamzon was carried out in Cebu.

This travesty of justice and its own due processes, however, serves only as this government's own undoing.  It only exposes the hopeless rottenness of the system this government represents and protects.  It merely enflames the people's revolutionary anger and collective desire for holistic change.  It just pushes the people to be more determined in breaking free from the structures of oppression and exploitation.

ROY ERECRE

NDFP Consultant for the Visayas