tonyo is now at tonyocruz.com

Veteran labor leader-turned-lawmaker Crispin Beltran of Anakpawis, gets a brief furlough on Monday, Sept. 8, after Judge Elmo Alameda granted motion by Atty. Romeo T. Capulong to permit him to go to Sandiganbayan to file appropriate charges against police personnel who illegally arrested him last Feb. 25.

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Ka Bel's detention has caught the ire of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the global association of legislators and parliamentarians which counts the House and Senate as member-legislatures. The IPU argues in several resolutions by the group's Committee on Human Rights of Parliamentarians that Ka Bel's arbitrary detention is an attack not only against him as a person, but more importantly on the House and the partylist he represents. Elsewhere, trade unionists of all ideological stripes have condemned the Arroyo administration's persecution of Ka Bel as an affront to all workers he has long served.

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Military chief Hermogenes Esperon Jr., one the generals mentioned in the Hello Garci tapes, is doing a Goebbels. He claims the New People's Army were the real perpetrators of the political killings of activists, lawyers, journalists, churchpeople and other critics of President Arroyo.

He has offered no proof to back his charge. Meanwhile, the military death squads continue to kill activists nationwide. Last week, the death toll has breached the 750 mark.

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Bayan Muna Rep. Satur C. Ocampo calls Esperon "sepulturero" after the general came out with accusations that an alleged purge happened in Inopacan, Leyte in 1984 with written and signed orders by Jose Maria Sison, Luis Jalandoni and Ocampo.

The idiot Esperon forgot that the Sison and Ocampo were under tight military detention at that time, being political prisoners of the Marcos dictatorship. Jalandoni meanwhile was already in Europe setting up the underground movement's international office.

Ocampo tells more about himself and his long activist record in an interview with ABS-CBN News.

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Protests greeted President Arroyo in her trips to Brussels and London this week. Read here Indymedia Belgium's report on the Brusells protest.

The European activists and friends of Filipinos joined OFWs in denouncing the political murders under Arroyo, and in asking the European Union to hold the President accountable as commander-in-chief of the AFP, whose generals and personnel have been tagged as masterminds and perpetrators by victims's relatives and witnesses.

Kahiya-hiya si Gloria!

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At the House of Representatives, the military generals again boycotted the last hearing of the Committee on Human Rights regarding the political killings.

But the AFP saw it fit to send two spies and ordered them to take videos of the proceedings, especially the victims's relatives and witnesses who were there to testify before committee chair Rep. Bienvenido Abante.

Abante was furious over the military's boycott and the unwarranted video coverage by the spies. Abante ordered the two spies arrested and detained. The two were released only after a general apologized to Abante.

No wonder no one believes the sincerity of the Melo Commission and the Arroyo government in resolving the issue of political killings. The AFP is disinterested in investigations, interested only in further harassing victims and witnesses, and spreading black propaganda to cover up its role.