By Cristina Palabay, Karapatan secretary general
MASS graves were the great inventions of the military during the tutelage of then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s Inter-Agency Legal Action Group (IALAG). The said formation was famed for masterminding the filing of trumped-up charges against activists and critics. The weaponization of the law and judicial harassment against said individuals and organizations, which was based on ludicrous and stupendous grounds, grew so rampant that even then United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions called for its immediate abolition. IALAG’s scion, the Inter-Agency Committee on Legal Action (IACLA), takes center stage yet again, peddling the same lies and sharpening old tactics used against peace consultants.
The “discovery” of the Inopacan mass grave in 2006 was an offshoot of the Baybay, Leyte mass grave, which was blamed on individuals and groups but was dismissed in 2005 for lack of evidence.
They did not get the results they wanted from the so-called Baybay mass grave found in 2000, so they started another intrigue–the Inopacan mass grave. The same prosecutor in the Baybay mass grave case was the same trial prosecutor in the Inopacan mass grave case. A quick look into the details of the two cases show that three names were included in both the Baybay case and the Inopacan case—those of Gregorio Eras, Concepcion Aragon, and Juanito Aviola. The three were now ridiculously alleged to have been killed and buried twice in different locations, a stupendous story now dubbed as the case of the travelling skeletons. Navigation software applications said the distance between Baybay and Inopacan, Leyte is roughly 24 kms.
The issuance of a warrant of arrest for 38 individuals accused in this discredited Inopacan mass grave case will only up the ante in the government’s vindictive crusade against progressive leaders and organizations.