JUSTICE Secretary Menardo Guevarra has assured the families of nine activists allegedly killed in the so-called Blood Sunday police operations last March 7 in Calabarzon that the Department of Justice would do everything to ferret out the truth.
Guevarra, who heads the Administrative Order 35 Task Force, made the assurance after meeting with families of the victims of the incident at his office last Wednesday.
The families of the victims and the wife of labor leader Dandy Miguel who was gunned down in Laguna three weeks after the Bloody Sunday incident sought the meeting.
During their meeting, the families requested the agencies under AO 35 to hasten its probe because up until now they are still gripped with fright whenever their dogs bark, raising fears that there are still policemen and military personnel lurking outside of their homes.
The task force was created under Administrative Order 35 issued in 2013 to investigate extrajudicial and politically motivated killings, as well as human-rights violations in the country.
The members of the task force are the DOJ as the lead agency, Department of the Interior and Local Government, Armed Forces of the Philippines, Philippine National Police and the National Bureau of Investigation.
“They expressed sorrow over the violent death of their loved ones and their hope that justice would be done,” Guevarra said.
The DOJ chief, on the other hand, explained to the victims’ families how the investigation under the AO 35 would proceed.
He assured that “reasonable efforts shall be exerted to find out the truth” and urged the family “to trust the integrity of the AO 35 mechanism and its capability to dispense justice.
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