On February 6, 43 community health workers holding a medical training mission in Morong, Rizal, Philippines were arrested by the military on accusations of being armed communist rebels. On that day around 300 soldiers and police forcibly entered the private resthouse of Dr. Melecia Velmonte, Philippine General Hospital infectious disease expert and University of the Philippines College of Medicine professor emeritus. The health workers were lined up, frisked, blindfolded, and brought by force to Camp Capinpin to be detained. They were refused legal counsel, subjected to various forms of torture, and prevented from meeting their relatives. This latest case of human rights violation under the Arroyo government has caused public outrage and international condemnation and spawned a running legal drama with the military initially defying a Supreme Court ruling to present the victims in court. With my white uniform rebuts a military spokesman’s statement in a television show justifying the illegal arrests, the points of which were (1) the low educational attainment of the arrested, (2) lack of publicity for the training event, (3) vocal leftist support for the 43, and (4) their revelation of their NPA affiliations during their detainment. The first two reveal how ignorant the military is regarding the prevailing approach towards community health. Educational background is irrelevant in health skills training. You do not need a college degree to be able to protect you and your community's health. You do not need to be the brightest one in the community to be able to pick up these skills. That is the purpose of the training anyway. Trainings of community health workers are not publicized or advertised in the usual ways. It is not only due to the effin high expense to do these things but also the uselessness of these publicizing modalities… These are not huge events needing humongous number of attendants. They don't need to tell everybody, they just need to tell the involved communities… For the fourth, confessions made during torture is and should be invalid. Under torture and extreme stress, a normal person can be made to do anything. Given that the detainment seem to be one big torture fest, why give weight to their confession? And for the third. That's one of the stupidest things I've heard in a long time (and I frequently read posts regarding quackery in SB). These groups are supporting the Morong 43 not because they are necessarily involved in them. Rather, they saw that attack on HR and the illegal nature of how the AFP handled the Morong 43 from capture to detainment. If you can let go of your bias against the left maybe you can realize that your attempts at hiding your mistakes is failing, greatly. Carol P. Araullo writes on the incredulity of the military’s arguments. She also contrasts the government’s treatment of the 43 health workers to that of the Ampatuan clan, former ally of the Arroyo administration and main suspect to last year’s gruesome Maguindanao massacre: This is the same Secretary Ermita who, along with other Arroyo henchmen, immediately invoked the right to due process of the Ampatuans, Arroyo’s warlord allies in Muslim Mindanao suspected to be behind the gruesome mass murder of relatives and supporters of their political enemies, a bevy of media personnel as well as innocent bystanders. The illegal detention of the 43 makes kape’t yosi sick: Consider these: forcible entry to a private place of domicile, a search warrant that was only produced after the operation and was issued by a Cavite court for a person that the house's owner – a respected consultant at the Philippine General Hospital – has never heard of, finding a grenade under a pillow, a so-called witness who miraculously came out and pointed fingers to his “comrades”. It gets more incredulous every day the arresting military unit tries to stick the “NPA” tag to those they are currently holding that even include two pregnant women. Daily Musings reposts and comments on an anti-communist Philippine political party’s statement on the arrest of the Morong 43: …it’s understandable that [PDSP] would defend the military in its actions. For me, though, the fact that the military saw fit to deny legal representation to the 43 members, who have yet to be proven to be NPA cadres, is rather disturbing, and could be a prelude of things to come. The other thing that I'm bothered about is the fact that the military saw fit to delay the observance of the writ of habeas corpus. The PDSP email follows the military line that security details had to be prepared, considering the number and the sensitivity of the supposed ranking of the detainees.