Ramon Argente, 53, a peasant organizer from Bicol, shall be operated for a triple bypass surgery his family and SELDA is still seeking for help to complete the huge amount needed for operation expenses. Photo courtesy of freeallpps.wordpress.com
Human rights group calls on outgoing Pres. Benigno Simeon Aquino III to release based on humanitarian grounds all the ailing and elderly political prisoners before his term ends.
It includes a Bicolano farmer currently detained at Camarines Norte Provincial Jail who needs continuous medication after his triple by-pass operation in 2013.
Turning 57 years old on november, Ramon Quina Argente is a farmer from San Pablo, Del Gallego, Camarines Sur. He has coronary artery disease and was undergoing medication when he was arrested in February 18, 2013 in Brgy. Muson, Bauan, Batangas.
After the surgery, he was brought back to detention at the PNP Custodial Center and took six months before his motion for hospitalization was granted. He remains in fragile condition, as he still experiences difficulty in breathing and chest pains according to human rights group Karapatan.
“His health worsened while detained at the Camarines Norte Provincial Jail”. Combined with inhuman jail condition. Argente is currently in prison based on more than 11 trumped – up criminal charges. These include murder, arson, robbery in band with arson, double frustrated murder and the Maot case in April 2012.
“It is hard enough to live in cramped and unventilated cells for years. It is even harder for those who are already suffering from ailments, like the 82 political prisoners who are ill,” Cristina Palabay, Karapatan secretary general said.
Among those named for immediate release on humanitarian grounds aside from Argente are Adelberto Silva, Wilma Austria-Tiamzon, Concha Araneta-Bocala, and Alex Birondo. Silva, 68, a consultant for the NDFP, had undergone quadruple angioplasty before he was arrested on June 15, 2015.
Austria-Tiamzon, a peace consultant of the NDFP has spondylolisthesis (forward displacement of vertebra), hypertension and carotid artery occlusion.
The 65-year-old Araneta-Bocala, another NDFP consultant, has weak lungs because of a history of pneumonia. She also has ulcer, recurring lumbar pain due to scoliosis, anemia, vertigo, goiter, and recurring pain in her left eye, which was operated on previously.
Alex Birondo is hypertensive and insulin-dependent because of diabetes. “We don’t want another Eduardo Serrano, Benny Barid, Alison Alcantara or Crisanto Fat who all died while in prison,” Palabay said.
Political prisoner Eduardo Serrano spent his last 11 years in jail because of fabricated criminal charges for a certain Rogelio Villanueva.
Serrano was already waiting for the dismissal of the last two cases against him when he was rushed to the hospital due to heart attack. Serrano died on January 8 at the Philippine Heart Center.
In 2014, Benny Barid died of chronic asthmatic bronchitis with emphysema at the New Bilibid Prisons (NBP) Hospital. For three years, Barid was in and out of the hospital. He cannot stand up alone, and needs to be put in a wheelchair to move around. Fellow political prisoners, and not the government, looked for means to provide for his medicines.
In 2013, Alison Alcantara died of pneumonia, sepsis and fatal arrhythmia. He was brought to the Philippine General Hospital only after he fell into a coma at the NBP Hospital.
Crisanto Fat, a peasant leader in Negros Occidental, died of heart enlargement. He was handcuffed in a hospital bed when he died in 2011.
http://bicoltoday.com/2016/04/20/detained-bicolano-farmer-remains-in-fragile-condition-karapatan-demands-release-of-ailing-political-prisoners/
KARAPATAN is the main Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) umbrella human rights front organization. Now at the end of their lives, KARAPATAN would like Filipinos to take pity on those who are admittedly members of the National Democratic Front, the clandestine political wing of the Maoist CPP. After having inflicted untold pain and suffering on ordinary Filipinos, there are many who feel that the continued incarceration of these criminals provides a small modicum of justice for those who have been tortured and killed at the hands of these anachronistic Maoists who showed no mercy toward their victims.
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