Immediate release demanded for framed-up doctors, health workers

 

Kilusang Mayo Uno joins the clamor for the immediate release of the 43 health workers, including doctors, framed-up and detained for three days now by Rizal military and police.

 

Around 300 soldiers and police forcibly raided on Saturday morning the compound of Dr. Melecia Velmonte, where training is being conducted for volunteer doctors and health practitioners for community health work. They were accused as NPAs and guilty of illegal possession of firearms. But before any warrant of arrest was shown to them, the training participants were lined up, frisked, blindfolded, and hand-cuffed. After which, the military allegedly found C4 explosives, guns, grenades and landmines in the compound. The health workers were brought to Camp Capinpin in Rizal and held incommunicado until present.

 

The charges and framed up evidences against the health workers are obviously baseless, and were concocted to suppress health workers aligned with the critics of the Arroyo administration. These doctors and health workers do health service in far flung and poverty stricken communities – areas where government’s social services are hardly felt.

 

The frame-up and mass arrest demonstrate how Arroyo’s fascism evolves in a vain effort to crush the people’s movement for genuine social change. From extra-judicial killings, abductions, and black propaganda, Arroyo’s Oplan Bantay Laya took on a new form two years ago with the massive cases of trumped up criminal charges filed against progressive militants, mostly from Southern Tagalog also. Last year, some militants experienced being harassed to death by military agents. Now, it seems that frame-up is the newest method of the regime to quell opposition and sow terror among the public.

 

The incident, an unprecedented one, also proves that no one is spared under the regime’s bloody campaign. Since 2001, the US-Arroyo regime has already victimized journalists, lawyers, and doctors – professions that supposedly enjoy safety under a democracy.

 

From concocting criminal charges to concocting evidences as bases for detention, the US-Arroyo regime is sending a message that it is hell-bent in its ambition to end rebellion before its term ends in a few months. We are sending, however, a clearer message: As long as oppression, injustice, and poverty is perpetrated by the ruling classes of this society, resistance and the progressive movement will only get stronger.

 

What the military has done to the doctors and health workers should incite the strongest condemnation and action. They have offered their knowledge and skills in sincere service to the masses. As they are detained and kept from continuing their noble cause, let us enjoin more people to take action for their immediate freedom, and for the genuine liberation of the masses they have served. #