Remulla doubles down on remarks on 2 environmental activists

Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla on Friday stood by the remarks he made against the two environmental activists who were earlier reported missing, saying his statements were from experience.

Remulla earlier said he believed that Jhed Tamano, 22, and Jonila Castro, 21 retracted their statements and accused the military of kidnapping them due to “peer pressure.”

He was later slammed by lawmakers for not explaining how peer pressure led Tamano and Castro to withdraw their statements.

“I have no misgivings about the statements I released on what happened to the activists having— trying to turn the tables on government… when in fact, we saw that in the surrender proper, they were accompanied by their parents,” he said.

On Tuesday, Tamano and Castro were presented at a press conference of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict to debunk claims that they were abducted.

However, the two said they were indeed abducted, contradicting the earlier report of authorities that they surrendered to the Army’s 70th Infantry Battalion (70IB).

The Justice secretary said he knew how “fights are made politically” and that he kept faith that the government was right in accepting the supposed surrender.

He also reiterated that the recantation was supposedly a part of a “playbook.”

“If there was a setup, it is part of the playbook, the playbook of the Communist Party of the Philippines to put the Philippines in a bad light in the international community,” Remulla said.

In response to criticisms that the DOJ lost its impartiality, Remulla stressed that they were prosecutors in the DOJ.

“We prosecute crimes, violations of Philippine Criminal Law, Philippine Statute, and that we will always be partial to victims of such crimes, and in the interest of the state, when the state is the victim of the crime, we will also be partial to the state,” he said.

The National Security Council has said that Tamano and Castro may face perjury charges after they retracted what they said in an affidavit.—LDF, GMA Integrated News