Dear Editor,
We rage and revolt — even in prison — at how our beloved comrade in the fight for the people’s basic interests and comprehensive social changes, Eduardo “Ka Eddik” Serrano, was killed.
Ka Eddik, who for decades had been a staunch fighter in the interest of indigenous peoples, lowly peasants, and other poor, exploited and oppressed people in the country, and became a peace consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). After consultations in 2004 with NDFP peace panel members, he was immediately and illegally arrested right after their separation.
To justify such arrest and long-detention since then, he was charged with several trumped-up cases against a fictitious “Rogelio Villanueva”. It took more than 11 years of utterly slow crawl of justice, before a Regional Trial Court ruled that he was not “Rogelio Villanueva” and cases against him were dismissed one-by-one, with only two more cases against “Rogelio Villanueva” remaining.
He aged in those more than 11 prison years, his heart weakened more and more, until he had to fight for his life under poor and oppressive prison conditions.
Even more than these conditions, it was the utter rotteness, indiifference and cruelty of the prevailing reactionary ruling system, and its systemic injustice that ultimately killed him.
We, Ka Eddik’s fellow NDFP peace consultants and other political prisoners detained in Camp Bagong Diwa and in many more jails throughout the country, vehemently protest what the prevailing reactionary ruling system had done to him and continue to do to us.
We register and make loud our protest, together with that of our fellow political prisoners in this camp and other detained felllow NDFP peace consultants and political prisoners in many other prisons in the country, by going through fasting and hunger strike from the first day of Ka Eddik’s wake in January 12 up to his interment in January 17.
Ka Eddik’s fellow NDFP peace consultants detained in Camp Bagong Diwa,
Adelberto Silva
Alan Jazmines
Ernesto Lorenzo
Loida Magpatoc
Ruben Saluta
Tirso Alcantara
Thank you.
SELDA
selda.phils@gmail.com
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