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MANILA >> Together with her hand raised excessive to greet the group, Philippine Sen. Leila de Lima appeared on stage campaigning for re-election in upcoming polls. Solely it wasn’t the opposition icon herself, however slightly a life-size cutout picture displayed by her allies on the marketing campaign path.
The 62-year-old high critic of outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte has been locked up for greater than 5 years in a high-security jail in the primary police camp within the capital. She is essentially the most well-known prisoner underneath Duterte’s turbulent six-year rule.
Remoted from the skin world by excessive jail partitions, iron bars, rusty barbed wire and armed guards, de Lima has accused Duterte and his deputies of fabricating the non-bailable drug-linked costs that landed her in jail in February 2017 and successfully stopped her from investigating the widespread killings of largely poor suspects underneath his anti-drug crackdown. Duterte has insisted on her guilt, saying witnesses testified that she acquired payoffs from imprisoned drug lords.
“I cried day by day particularly at evening within the first few weeks, not likely out of self-pity however for my household and out of disbelief,” de Lima advised The Related Press on Tuesday, in her first court-authorized jail interview since her arrest. “I used to be remoted. There was nobody else however stray cats.”
Throughout her imprisonment, she has solely received courtroom permission 5 instances to depart detention briefly and underneath heavy guard for medical checkups, to attend a celebration for her son after he handed the bar examination and to console her ailing 89-year-old mom.
The jail wall and desolation, nonetheless, have did not silence her, she mentioned.
“I’m a fighter,” mentioned the bespectacled former human rights fee chief and justice secretary, who welcomed an AP journalist, her lawyer and workers with a smile and a fist bump in jail as two cops saved watch.
“It’s powerful, however I can handle,” she mentioned. “I can by no means lose hope.”
An web connection, TV and radio units, private computer systems and cellphones are prohibited in her tiny cell, however she has saved abreast of home and worldwide developments by means of the 2 newspapers delivered to her every morning, from radio information blaring out from someplace within the jail compound and from information clippings introduced by her Senate workers.
This has allowed her to concern greater than 1,200 handwritten each day statements from detention up to now, largely her essential ideas on Duterte’s governance and response to breaking information just like the 2020 electoral triumph of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, which she welcomed as a victory of democracy over “fabricated populism,” and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which she known as “an act of insanity” that has put the world on edge.
She has filed greater than 600 proposed Senate payments and resolutions from jail, many geared toward strengthening human rights and authorities accountability and easing poverty. One invoice that was signed into regulation in 2019 requires the common funding of a program offering money support to the poor who enlist their kids in well being and academic campaigns.
Operating for re-election within the Might 9 polls underneath the primary opposition bloc led by presidential candidate Leni Robredo, the incumbent vice chairman, de Lima sought a trial courtroom’s permission to take part in on-line campaigning and debates and to permit journalists to interview her. However authorities prosecutors opposed the requests, saying she’s going through capital costs and that granting them would “nearly make her a free man and promote her to a particular rank.” The courtroom allowed her to grant media interviews in detention however with out cameras and to often meet together with her marketing campaign staff in jail.
Locked away from the marketing campaign path, de Lima despatched her cut-out pictures to seem in her place.
“I’m unhappy as a result of I needs to be on the market interacting with the voters,” she mentioned, including that every time her title known as at marketing campaign rallies and other people see her “standee” being carried to heart stage, it receives a “heat response from audiences.”
De Lima expressed aid that Duterte’s crisis-ridden time period is drawing to a detailed however mentioned she was “very, very involved” that the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s son and namesake, who’s in search of the presidency, has led pre-election surveys by an enormous margin.
She expressed fears {that a} Marcos presidency could undermine the rule of regulation and permit the household to dam efforts to get better their suspected ill-gotten wealth and absolutely compensate the hundreds of human rights victims underneath his father’s dictatorship. There’s additionally the hazard of “historic revisionism,” she mentioned.
“Generally, you may’t even assume how is it that we’re going again to this course,” de Lima mentioned.
A former regulation professor, de Lima led the nationwide Fee on Human Rights beginning in 2008 and later served as justice secretary earlier than successful a Senate seat in 2016 in her first try in a nationwide election. However she has not been faring strongly in latest pre-election surveys and blames the brash-speaking Duterte, who she says “demonized” her and subjected her to misogynistic assaults that she may hardly deal with from jail.
After de Lima surrendered and was detained in February 2017, Duterte gave a speech earlier than the Filipino neighborhood in Thailand the place he described de Lima as a sinner with “a really thick face.” The 76-year-old president mentioned he’ll seemingly find yourself “in hell” first however when de Lima follows, “I’ll inform Mr. Devil: ‘The queen you’ve been ready for is right here.’”
“Whereas some didn’t consider him, some others did consider the character assassination and demonization,” she mentioned, including that she and her staff attempt to combat such disinformation within the marketing campaign.
Duterte and de Lima have lengthy been on a collision course over human rights.
As a human rights fee chief in 2009, she led an investigation into the widespread killings of drug suspects underneath then-mayor Duterte in southern Davao metropolis. However she failed to search out any witnesses who would testify publicly towards the native chief, who was dubbed Duterte Harry after the Hollywood police character with little regard for the regulation. In 2016, Duterte rose to the presidency and de Lima was elected to the Senate and pursued an investigation into his marketing campaign towards unlawful medicine however authorities moved to place her underneath arrest.
In accordance with official police information, greater than 6,000 largely poor suspects have been killed underneath Duterte’s crackdown, however human rights teams say the demise toll is significantly increased. The Worldwide Felony Courtroom has begun an investigation into the killings in what an ICC prosecutor mentioned could possibly be a case of crimes towards humanity.
De Lima’s years-long detention has sparked calls from the European Union Parliament, some U.S. legislators and U.N. human rights consultants and worldwide watchdogs for de Lima’s quick launch.
Duterte has responded with indignant outbursts and threats, saying Westerners had been bullying and meddling in his nation’s home affairs.
Requested if she feels that she may win again her liberty as soon as Duterte steps down, de Lima mentioned that if the subsequent administration can be past his lingering affect, “I’ve a reasonably good probability of attaining justice.”
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