RSSPolitical detainees and other victims of the Marcos regime should be compensated before the government works out what to do with the former First Lady´s jewelry collection, says a nun directing a human rights NGO.
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Franciscan Missionaries of Mary Sister Crecensia Lucero, executive director of Task Force Detainees Philippines (TFDP), says government officials working to recover the Marcoses´ ill-gotten wealth “should look into how to expedite the release” of funds to compensate victims as ordered by a U.S. court.
Sister Lucero told UCA News on June 16 it “upset” her to hear of the jewelry scandal while victims of human rights violations of the Ferdinand Marcos regime “have not been paid a single centavo.”
Congress has been “sitting” on the Human Rights Compensation Bill, which addresses the technicalities of releasing the funds, she charged.
The nun was responding to media reports that former Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez had written a letter to the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) chairman on June 15 requesting the return of the sequestered jewelry to Imelda Marcos if there are no legal impediments.
Gonzalez ended his more than four-year stint in the Department of Justice on that day.
Nicanor Suarez, PCGG Chief Information Officer, said there is a case now before the Sandiganbayan (anti-graft court) “that includes the jewelry, so there is legal impediment.”
Suarez said Gonzalez had written in response to a request from Imelda Marcos for the return of jewelry seized by the Philippines government.
Sister Lucero said the Philippines Congress should focus on passing the pending Human Rights Compensation Bill. “Congress has to answer basic questions of to whom or to which body to release the money and who will be entitled to compensation and how much,” she said.
The Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines established TFDP in 1974 to assist political prisoners. Its records show political detainees, including Church workers, were tortured and extorted and their families watched.
A group of 9,539 victims of human rights violations filed a class action suit against Ferdinand Marcos two months after the 1986 people power movement in Manila drove the president and his family into exile in Hawaii.
In 1995, the court awarded claimants US$1.9 billion comprising US$1.2 billion in exemplary damages and US$700 million in compensatory damages. Victims included the late TFDP director, Sister Mariani Dimaranan, also a Franciscan nun and ex-political detainee of Marcos´ martial law government. The country was under martial law from 1972-1981.
“We have lobbied Congress and followed up with relevant House Committees but many victims, including Sister Mariani, have died without due compensation,” Sister Lucero said.
The Marcos jewelry, which includes a diamond tiara, ear rings, necklaces and rings, comprises three sets, according to Agence France Presse news agency, includes the “Hawaii collection,” jewels the Marcoses brought to Honolulu after the family fled the Philippines in 1986; the “Malacanang collection,” made up of jewels left by the couple in the palace when they fled the country; and the “Roumeliotes collection.”
“The most valuable set, the Roumeliotes collection, comprises about 60 percent of the total value of all the jewelry,” Suarez said. He explained that the collection is named after Demetrius Roumeliotes, a Greek national who was caught trying to smuggle the jewelry out of the country in 1986.
Ferdinand Marcos was Philippine president from 1965 to 1986. His regime was accused of corruption and political mismanagement. In 1986, in the face of allegations of vote rigging by a wide section of society, a “people power” uprising drove him from office. He and his wife then went into exile.
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