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Issue Number 24, August 2004
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Kapatiran Issue
No. 24, August 2004
MARIE
HILAO-ENRIQUEZ
A Life Of Struggle Against Oppression, A Life Of Service
To Human Rights
Marie Hilao-Enriquez
made a speaking tour through New Zealand in October 2004,
organised by PSNA. This is her CV. We have added a few
subheadings and done a bit of editing for the benefit of
New Zealand readers. It is up to date as of March 2004.
Since then she has been back to Norway several times, and
to Holland, in her independent observer capacity at the
peace talks between the Philippine government and the
National Democratic Front (the coalition of groups waging
the armed struggle for the past 35 years). Plus she has
been busy with her usual work as the Philippine
movement's most high profile human rights campaigner.
Marie's full name is Amaryllis* Hilao-Enriquez. Born
June 27, 1953 in Bulan, Sorsogon, a province in the Bicol
Region, located at the southernmost tip of Luzon island
(the main island of the Philippines), to the late Maximo
H Hilao, a fisherman (died 1988), and the late Celsa Rapi
Hilao (died 2003), a homemaker. * She is named after
a tropical flower. It is the norm for Filipinos to use a
nickname.
She spent her elementary (primary school) grades in her
hometown, Bulan; her last elementary year was in Metro
Manila. Consistently in the honours list during her
elementary years; and graduated in high school as class
valedictorian (i.e. the student who delivers the
valedictory - farewell - address at the graduation
ceremony. The Philippines, a former US colony, has
inherited these American educational practices and
terminology).
She entered the University of the Philippines (UP) as a
UP Government scholar taking up a bachelor's degree in
Occupational Therapy, in 1970, the time of heightened
student activism in the Philippines. Became a member of
the militant student group Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic
Youth), organising out-of-school youths and urban poor
dwellers in Quezon City (one of the cities which make up
Metro Manila). When martial law was declared, in 1972,
she continued organising the urban poor in the
underground as the dictator Ferdinand Marcos declared the
Kabataang Makabayan as well as other student and youth
groups as illegal.
Political Prisoner
On April 4, 1973, the apartment occupied by her family
was raided by Philippine Constabulary (PC) soldiers.
Marie was held captive for hours but was able to escape
at this time but her sisters, Liliosa (a senior college
student and associate editor of her school's student
paper) and Josefina (a high school student at that time),
were arrested without warrants. All three suffered
torture from the hands of the military. Liliosa was
raped, tortured and murdered on April 6, 1973 inside the
detention camp in Camp Crame, Quezon City. She was the
first woman political prisoner who was killed during
martial law. Her death led to the formation, in 1974, of
the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, the leading
human rights organisation, which documented human rights
violation cases of the martial law dictatorship.
Marie spent her time in the underground organising
students and farmers in the provinces and continuing the
struggle against the dictatorship with thousands of youth
who went underground during martial law. On October 8,
1974, she was arrested together with her husband Romy
Enriquez, her brother Winfred (known as Nonoy), and her
then sister-in-law, Violeta Sevandal. In 1975 she gave
birth to Liza Liliosa, the eldest of her two daughters,
while she was imprisoned (the youngest is Andrea, who was
born in 1979). On July 6, 1976, the then PC Chief,
General Fidel Ramos (who went on to become President of
the Philippines, from 1992-98) and the then Secretary of
National Defense, Juan Ponce Enrile, were forced to
release her, together with another political prisoner and
a nursing mother, when all the political prisoners in
Camp Bagong Diwa staged a hunger strike for their
release.
Having a daughter to feed, and with four of her family
members still incarcerated, Marie had to work in a
Government agency to support her family (these were
difficult years to have job outside the Government as the
stigma of being a political prisoner sticks with a
released detainee). However, she continued assisting the
political prisoners in their campaign for release. In
1978, she was one of the founding members of KAPATID, the
organisation of relatives, friends and supporters of
political prisoners, which worked for the release of
political prisoners and helped them in the litigation and
follow-up of their cases; it also helped in the
detainees' other needs like milk and food for the
children, attending hearings in court, campaigning for
their release.
In 1978, she went back to the University of the
Philippines to work as a research aide at the College of
Social Work and Community Development. Here, she
organised students to spend time in the rural areas to
organise farmers for their struggle for land. In 1981,
she worked with the Farmers' Assistance Board, a
non-government organisation (NGO) assisting farmers in
their struggle for land and at the same time with their
desire to improve production of their farms without using
any chemicals. She also helped establish provincial NGOs
to help the farmers in their localities. She was
instrumental in setting up the Appropriate Technology
Center for Rural Development (ATCRD, an NGO which
researches organic farming and technologies appropriate
to the level of understanding and capacity of farmers).
In 1985, she helped in setting up SIBAT (Sibol ng Agham
at Akmang Teknolohiya or Spring of Science and
Technology) a network of NGOs involved in organic farming
and appropriate technology in the country. SIBAT
coordinated the activities of the NGO's and served as an
organisation where professional scientists and
technologists could share their expertise with farmers'
groups.
Successful Billion Dollar Class Action Suit
Against The Marcoses
In 1986, when Marcos was ousted (by People Power 1),
Marie volunteered to help in the setting up of the
national secretariat of SELDA (Society of Ex-Detainees
for Liberation, Against Detention and for Amnesty), the
organisation of former political prisoners founded in
1985. She organised the national congress of the group on
May 25, 1986. Before the congress, upon decision of the
founding National Executive Board of SELDA, Marie, as
head of the national secretariat, assisted in the filing
of the landmark class action suit against Ferdinand
Marcos. This is the class action suit initiated by the
victims of martial law against the dictator and his
family. Marie had to convince her late parents to be the
lead plaintiffs in the class suit. The victims of martial
law were able to gain a favourable judgment at the
Hawaiian court in 1992 (the nearly 10,000 human
rights victims were awarded $NZ1.9 billion in damages. A
Hawaiian court had jurisdiction because, under US law, if
a human rights violator is resident in the US, then
he/she can be sued in a US civil court. The Marcoses went
into Hawaiian exile when they were overthrown, in 1986.
The victims have yet to see a cent of the money).
In 1989, Marie left SELDA to be the Executive Director of
Binhi Agricultural Resource Foundation Inc., an NGO
assisting farmers in organic agriculture and appropriate
technology in Visayas and Mindanao. She held the position
until 1995 when she was called back to be the Secretary
General of SELDA.
By this time, an information campaign, as well as an
education one, had to be launched by SELDA among its
members because of the American lead lawyer's attempts to
enter into compromise and settlement agreements with the
Marcos family, without consulting the lead plaintiffs in
the Hawaii class action suit, much less SELDA. Together
with Attorney Romeo Capulong, general counsel of SELDA,
she launched a campaign to explain to the members of the
class suit the status of the case; and, consult them on
their position as to the compromise and settlement
agreements which the American lead lawyer made with the
Marcoses and the Philippine government. This campaign
took her to protest rallies in Hong Kong in 1996 when
settlement negotiations were being conducted by the
American lead lawyer and the Philippine and Swiss bank
lawyers. In 1998 she went to the Swiss Parliament to
relay the desire of the majority of the victims', to
ensure that they would have an allocation of the Marcos'
assets being transferred by the Swiss government from
Swiss banks to an escrow account in the Philippine
National Bank (several hundred million $US of illgotten
Marcos wealth had been identified in Swiss banks in the
1980s and frozen, pending resolution of legal claims).
Human Rights Leader
In 1995 Marie became the general secretary of KARAPATAN
or the Alliance for the Advancement of Peoples' Rights, a
human rights alliance which was set up by the originators
of the former Philippine Alliance of Human Rights
Advocates or PAHRA. Differences in the analysis of
Philippine situation and how the groups view human rights
work after the dictatorship, led to the split in the
human rights movement in the country. KARAPATAN members
still believed that no substantial change in the system
occurred despite changes in leaders; political control is
still wielded by the elite classes and the violations
continue even after restoration of democratic
institutions in the country. The State is still the major
violator of human rights. PAHRA members believed that
human rights could be fought within the Government set-up
as there are progressive individuals who were serving in
Government.
KARAPATAN is one of the organisations that actively
worked for the overthrow of the Estrada regime in 2001.
It was the first organisation to call for the ouster of
President Joseph Estrada in 1999, as cases of human
rights violations were being committed by the Estrada
regime in its counter-insurgency operations dubbed as
Oplan Makabayan (Estrada was overthrown by People Power
2, in January 2001, and remains in nominal detention,
undergoing a very leisurely trial on charges of massive
corruption. He was replaced by his Vice President, Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo. She won the Presidency, in her own
right, in the 2004 election).
As general secretary of the human rights alliance, Marie
led the factfinding missions to the far south island
province of Basilan in 2001 when Macapagal-Arroyo
launched a crackdown on supposed Abu Sayyaf suspects (a
notorious group of bandits, who specialise in very high
profile kidnappings and murders in the southernmost
Muslim islands, between the Philippines and Borneo). She
also led a similar mission to the island of Sulu in April
2002. These missions led the Arroyo government to brand
KARAPATAN as "Abu Sayyaf lovers" and coddlers
of terrorists. In July 2002, KARAPATAN was one of the
convenors of the International Solidarity Mission to
Zamboanga City, Basilan and General Santos to evaluate
the impact of the entry into the Philippines by US troops
and their military exercise in Basilan. Marie led the
Mission team that went to General Santos City (Zamboanga
City and General Santos City are in the south of the main
southern island of Mindanao, where the majority of the
Philippines' Muslim population lives. Basilan is one of
the islands between Mindanao and Borneo).
Nearly 100 years of US military presence in the
Philippines ended with the historic 1991 vote by the
Philippine Senate not to renew the treaty allowing the US
to maintain massive bases there. Ever since that forced
withdrawal, the US has been trying to regain a military
presence in the Philippines, and with President
Macapagal- Arroyo having declared her full support for
the US in the "War On Terror", there have been
a whole succession of US military exercises in the
Philippines, including near the southern battlefronts
where the Philippine military has been fighting Muslim
separatists for decades.
KARAPATAN is responsible for documenting human rights
violations in the country. It submits its findings to the
Philippine government through Congress, the Senate,
Commission on Human Rights, the Defense Department, the
Philippine National Police and other Government bodies.
It urges the legislative bodies to open up inquiries and
investigations into cases of human rights violations. It
also campaigns for the release of political prisoners,
and intervenes in the court hearings of their cases.
Human rights education is also carried out by the
Alliance.
Vital Role At Peace Talks
In 1998, when the Comprehensive Agreement for the Respect
of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law
(CARHRIHL) was signed between the Republic of the
Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the
Philippines (NDFP, the coalition body headed by the
Communist Party of the Philippines, whose New People's
Army has been waging an armed struggle for 35 years) in
their peace negotiations, Marie was nominated by the
NDFP, together with the Supreme Bishop of the Philippine
Independent Church, to be one of the independent
observers in the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC)
stipulated in the agreement to be set up by both parties.
When President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo assumed the
presidency in January 2001, she immediately announced the
resumption of the peace talks between the Government of
the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the NDFP. The
talks were held in April 2001 but were scuttled by the
GRP in June of the same year. Marie attended both events
but these talks yielded no concrete results.
Alarmed by the increasing cases of human rights
violations under the Macapagal-Arroyo regime, KARAPATAN
decided to send Marie on a speaking tour of nine cities
in the US and Canada to talk on the worsening human
rights violations in the Philippines. In the process, she
also spoke to a big rally of several hundred thousand
people in Washington DC (January 2003) against the
impending war on Iraq launched by imperial America. In
her speaking tour, she denounced the return of the US
military forces to her country and strongly criticised
the Macapagal-Arroyo administration for being a too
willing puppet to the American government's impositions.
Upon her return to the country in February 2003, as the
US was preparing to invade Iraq, the Philippine military
launched preemptive bombing strikes on February 11, 2003
in the Moro* areas in the Pikit Complex in North
Cotabato, Mindanao, home to the forces of the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Immediately, hundreds of
thousands of Moro families evacuated from their homes,
scores of children died in the evacuation centres. *
Moro - the common name for Filipino Muslims.
Marie headed the Factfinding Mission to look into the
circumstances of the Moro evacuees whose number swelled
to 400,000 by March 2003. The mission also looked into
the reasons why the military bombed the MILF areas even
without provocation. In April 2003 KARAPATAN lost another
of its staunch human rights activists, Eden Marcellana,
who was murdered by a death squad comprised of military
men and/or their agents. The violations have grown in an
alarmingly rising fashion and committed in a continuing
pattern of wanton impunity.
On October 20-21, 2003, Marie, together with a lawyer
from the Public Interest Law Center and another volunteer
from KARAPATAN, attended the 78th Session of the UN Human
Rights Committee (UNHRC) in Geneva, Switzerland and
submitted an NGO report to the body. It was in this
session that the compliance of the Philippine government
to the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR) was reviewed by the UNHRC.
The early part of 2004 saw Marie actively lobbying for
the enactment of the compensation bill that would
indemnify the victims of martial law. This was because
the Supreme Court ordered the transfer of the $US684
million Swiss deposits held in escrow by the Philippine
National Bank, to the National Treasury. As national
elections were to be held in May 2004, Marie warned the
Macapagal-Arroyo government not to use the money for her
election campaign.
By February 2004 Macapagal-Arroyo called for the
resumption of the peace talks between the GRP and the
NDFP, which she had unilaterally suspended in 2001. Marie
attended the peace talks in Norway as one of the
NDFP-nominated independent observers. She saw to it that
the agreement forged in the talks covered the
indemnification issue and the release of political
prisoners.
The Oslo Joint Statement is the product of the peace
talks. Among other things, it contains the agreement of
the two parties to work for the preservation of the money
for the indemnification of the martial law victims, the
release of political prisoners and the formation of the
Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) which will monitor the
compliance of the two parties to the provisions of the
Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and
International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), an agreement
both Parties signed in 2000.
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