A Davao del Norte court’s conviction of ACT Teachers Partylist Rep. France Castro and former Bayan Muna Partylist Rep. Satur Ocampo to up to six years in prison for child abuse proves once more that justice in the Philippines grinds painfully slow.
Still, the judiciary is not how it is depicted by the International Criminal Court as being incapable of prosecuting political personalities, in its intrusive investigation into the war on drugs that obtains its information from a circle that Castro and Ocampo are part of.
The Davao court ruling was based on an incident in 2018 where the pair was identified among 11 individuals that included administrators and teachers of the Salugpungan Ta’ Tanu Igkanogon Community Learning Center in Sitio Dulyan, Talaingod, Davao del Norte, and two members of the left-wing Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT).
Investigation found that Castro, Ocampo, and their co-accused unlawfully kept the minors in their company and transported them on board five passenger vans “exposing the said same to conditions prejudicial to their development.”
From there, the court ruled that the militants were liable for what was described as schools that were breeding grounds for the dreaded communist party’s armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA).
Proof beyond reasonable doubt was established by prosecutors who showed that the pair and their cohorts “indeed committed acts detrimental to the safety and wellbeing of the minor Lumad learners.”
During the previous administration, the Salugpungan schools were investigated and some were closed after they were found to be incorporating radical courses in their curricula.
Members of Indigenous People (IP) groups had complained that their children were being oriented or brainwashed into a world of hate in the Salugpungan schools to prepare them for a life of a communist guerrilla.
At that time also, the parents of university students petitioned Congress to help them find the missing students who were believed recruited by front organizations of the rebel movement for deployment later as NPA rebels.
Through the intervention of the left-wing Makabayan group, some of the Lumad children surfaced, the majority of them indoctrinated in radical principles as they mouthed leftist propaganda while denying they had been abducted or were missing.
The government had documented cases of minor children exploited, brainwashed, and radicalized to serve the armed struggle.
“There were 8,735 children, aged 13 to 16, recruited by (youth party-list group) Anakbayan, some of them eventually into the NPA,” then Armed Forces of the Philippines Deputy Chief of Staff for Civil-Military Operations Major General Antonio Parlade Jr. said during a visit to DAILY TRIBUNE.
He affirmed then that fronts of the revolutionary movement and learning centers converted young children into NPA child warriors.
The court ruling noted that the radical duo’s group transported the minors on foot for three hours on a remote, dark, and unsecured road without the assistance of law enforcement, any government agency, or the written permission and consent of the minors’ parents, thereby exposing them to danger and hazards.
Castro and Ocampo, of course, condemned the court decision as “unacceptable and unjust,” pointing out that those responsible for the forcible closure of the Lumad schools “have never been investigated.”
National Security Adviser Eduardo Año held that the court ruling was a crucial step in ending the exploitation of Indigenous communities and safeguarding vulnerable minors from abduction and indoctrination into divisive ideologies.
Año said such actions violated human rights and threatened national peace and security.