GMA: No mercy for ‘Pen 50’ Says rule of lawmust be upheld
BY JOCELYN MONTEMAYOR
PRESIDENT Arroyo has ordered officials,
particularly from the security and defense sectors, to remain
vigilant and to continue to "flush out" remaining threats to
public safety and security.
Arroyo issued the orders before she left for
an eight-day European trip Saturday night, or three days after
Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and other leaders of the Oakwood
mutiny and their supporters led a six-hour standoff at the
Manila Peninsula hotel in Makati City. The group has been tagged
as the "Pen 50,"
Arroyo also ordered the investigation and
prosecutorial arms of government to ensure "that the full force
of the law will bear heavily, expeditiously but with due
process, against those who were or are to be found responsible
for… (Thursday’s) disruptive and criminal acts."
THE Philippine Press Institute condemns the
arrest of news-media practitioners on November 29, 2007.
Patently unconstitutional and carried out
with such impunity that the innocent captives were treated like
common criminals, cuffed, ordered to raise their hands in
surrender, and bused to the country’s most notorious camp,
Bagong Diwa, in Bicutan, the arrest was an unprecedented assault
on press freedom and on the even more critical democratic right
it is meant to guarantee – the people’s right to know. Indeed,
it was an assault on democracy itself and fitted into a pattern
of intimidation and repression by the Gloria Arroyo regime.
The institute demands an immediate
institution of accountability and of earnest and credible
measures that will ensure the outrage is not repeated.
