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CONGRESS URGED TO PASS BILL TO COMPENSATE MARTIAL LAW VICTIMS
January 26, 2004
Former Senator Heherson T. Alvarez today called on members of the House of Representatives not to allow the election fever to distract them from their obligation to finally pass a long-overdue bill that seeks to compensate some 10,000 victims of Martial Law.
Alvarez was reacting to the reported delay in the passage of the bill because of the frequent absences of legislators from the House sessions, owing perhaps to the onset of the election season. Congress adjourns session on Feb. 6.
"Compensation for the human rights victims should be the last act of the 12th Congress. This is the least we could do for the human rights victims and the legacy of freedom and democracy that they left behind," he urged former colleagues in the House.
Alvarez, a colleague of the late Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. in the overseas movement against martial rule and founder of the opposition movement Ninoy Aquino Movement (NAM), is himself a human rights victim.
While in exile in the United States lobbying to cut off economic and military aid to the dictatorship, his younger brother, Marsman, was tortured and killed - skull cracked open, eyes gouged and tongue plucked out. The brutal death in the family was too much for their father who suffered a heart attack and died a few days later.
"Congress must work overtime to pass a bill that will set aside a substantial portion of the $683-million ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses to settle legally the claims of the victims without violating the country's domestic laws," Alvarez said.
Under Republic Act 6657 or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL), which Alvarez, as senator, authored in 1987, "…all receipts from assets recovered and from sales of ill-gotten wealth recovered through the Presidential Commission on Good Government…" shall be used to fund agrarian reform.
He tried to remedy this as early as 1998 when, as Isabela congressman, he filed House Bill No. 7000, asking the government to compensate before anything else the certified victims of Martial Law once the $683 million is awarded to the government.
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