Joker Arroyo Wants Widows To Quit Digging Into The Past

rom the transcript of JOKER ARROYO's PDI podcast we get the following statement when asked what he thought about the reported political or extrajudicial killings in the Philippines--

Joker Arroyo: "All I know is that, ideologically, since all my adult life has been dedicated to human rights, I instinctively condemn it; but I don't want to add more to that because I can’t give an educated answer because I'm campaigning. I leave that to the other guys to do it. You know, you take a human rights' case, one thing important in human rights lawyering of advocacies is to be fair. You cannot be a human rights advocate if you are not fair. Because, if you take [sides], you are not fair; then you violate the first rule of human right, and that is fairness."

Well, Amen and God bless, but what do we hear today from this lifelong "human rights lawyer" but the following admonition to the government, the military and the widows of murdered ex-NPA rebels, to just let bygones be bygones --

Satur Ocampo Finds An Ally In Team Unity's Sen. Joker Arroyo(ABSCBN News) MANILA, Philippines -- Beleaguered Bayan Muna (People First) Representative Satur Ocampo has found an ally in Senator Joker Arroyo, who criticized the government for reviving old cases against the militant lawmaker and Anakpawis Representative Crispin Beltran.

In a statement, Arroyo said there was something "grievously wrong" about the standing warrant of arrest against Ocampo and the continued detention of Beltran at the Philippine Heart Center in Quezon City for crimes allegedly committed during the martial law years or before the first EDSA uprising in 1986.

"The Armed Services must re-think its position," said Senator Arroyo, a candidate of the administration’s TEAM Unity ticket.

"It has a responsibility to protect the State and the people from current elements that would want to subvert its authority; at the same time, it has also a duty to adhere to established government policy that what is past is past, otherwise, there will be no stability in government policy," he said.

A warrant of arrest has been issued against Ocampo for his alleged involvement in the purging of his comrades during the martial law years. Ocampo was formerly spokesman of the National Democratic Front, the political front of the communists.

The Communist Party of the Philippines had ordered the purging of rebels suspected of being deep penetration agents of the Marcos government.

Senator Arroyo said past presidents Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos had made policy positions designed to "put to rest the past adventurisms of the Left and Right."

"The Armed services must restrain itself from digging into the past, which was intended to be buried by past administrations," he said.

The arrest warrants against Satur Ocampo and Joma Sison that Joker wants the government to rethink were issued by a Leyte Regional Trial Court after the Armed Forces did some "digging into the past" in Inopacan, Leyte and discovered over 60 corpses in one of the numerous extrajudicial killing fields of the CPP NPA NDF from those dark days of paranoiac purges in the late eighties. Turns out the widows of some of those murder ex-comrades have testified that their husbands were ordered killed after they joined a rival "people's organization" and tried to leave the fold of true believers.

I suppose Joker Arroyo, the human rights lawyer, doesn't think these human widows have any rights at all and should just quit "digging into the past."