ANGELES CITY- Multi-sectoral groups from various parts of Central Luzon will gather here today to commemorate the first year marking the unsolved killing of Dutch missionary Willen Geertman who had devoted his life to helping victims of disasters and rights violations in the region.
“A year has passed since Willem’s legal case has been filed in court. Robbery with homicide was filed for a case that was clearly an extra-judicial murder. A petition for review was filed with the Department of Justice whose deadline is July,” noted Sister Cecille Ruiz, chair of the human rights group Karapatan-Gitnang Luson (Karapatan-GL).
On July 3 last year, Geertman, 67, was shot dead allegedly by military men who barged into the compound of Alay Bayan Inc., a relief and rehabilitation group which he headed as executive director in Barangay Telabastagan near the City of San Fernando’s boundary with this city.
The police later filed homicide and robbery charges against some suspects, but Geertman’s partner Aurora Santiago frowned on the police charges and instead filed murder case against suspects she named as Marvin Marsan of Barangay Tangle in Mexico and Harold de la Cruz of Barangay Cacutud of Arayat, as well as four John Does in the killing of Geertman.
No arrests have been made in either case, even as Geertman’s supporters, including compatriots in the Netherlands, formed the Justice for Willem Geertman Movement (J4WGM).
Geertman’s supporters will converge outside the Holy Rosary parish church here today at 10 a.m. where they will hold a program and hold a candle lighting ceremony at 12 noon at about the time he was shot dead a year ago.
In a statement yesterday, Karapatan-Gitnang Luson described Willem as “an internationalist, a human rights defender and advocate, an environmentalist, a missionary of Dutch origin but a Filipino at heart.
“For the more or less two decades of life that Willem spent in the Philippines, most of the years in Aurora province where he entered and embraced the feelings, insights and aspirations of the poor, deprived, and oppressed,” she noted.
Ruiz said “July 3 is a day not only to celebrate his memory, but a day to show and express indignation for his murder, a day to protest the US-Aquino regime’s terror and anti-people policies sugar-coated in its Oplan Bayanihan counter-insurgency program.”
J4WGM leader Roman Polintan said Geertman’s case “reminds us of the fact that Gen. Jovito Palparan, the number one human rights violator in Central Luzon, is still at large.”
“All these show how slow the justice system works in this semi-feudal and semi-colonial country under the US-Aquino regime which is marked by continuing human rights violations, where a culture of impunity continues to reign, and where militarization escalates, especially in areas where so-called development programs,” are being implemented,” Polintan said
Ruiz cited that during the past three years under the Aquino administration, her group has documented “15 political detainees languishing for years in jails, 18 cases of arbitrary arrests and detention, eight cases of extra judicial killings, five cases of frustrated killings, almost a thousand cases of threats, harassment and intimidation, about a thousand dislocated families due to demolitions, and other human rights violations.”
“We reiterate our united call and demand for justice for Willem Geertman and hold accountable those we believe are state-backed perpetrators who should be in jail. We will remain vigilant and continue the struggle until justice has been served,” Karapatan-GL’s statement said.
