KARAPATAN decries “wheelchair justice” as desperate, insidious ploy of Rodrigo Duterte
KARAPATAN Public Information
PRESS RELEASE
10 September 2025
Reference: Cristina Palabay, KARAPATAN secretary general, 09173162831
KARAPATAN Public Information Desk, 09189790580
KARAPATAN decries “wheelchair justice” as desperate, insidious ploy of Rodrigo Duterte
KARAPATAN assailed the camp of Rodrigo Duterte for once more playing the victim card. In reaction to a statement by Duterte’s lead counsel that detention has taken a toll on the former dictator’s health, Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said, “We decry this ‘wheelchair justice’ being conveniently resorted to by Duterte and many other corrupt and fascist politicians whenever they have their backs to the wall as they face the people’s wrath.”
“In contrast to his overweening arrogance in front of the victims of his bloody drug war, Duterte now wants to appear like a sick and timid old man asking for pity,” added Palabay. “It is the oldest ploy in the book to prevent justice from taking its course,” she decried.
“’Wheelchair justice’ was infamously resorted to by Gloria Arroyo and Joseph Estrada to avoid being kept behind bars,” said Palabay. “The courts granted Estrada’s motion for house arrest for a mere knee injury, so he spent what would have been jail and prison time in his Tanay resthouse instead. And Arroyo added a neckbrace to her props to wangle hospital arrest from the courts instead of being detained in a regular jail. The neckbrace, however, miraculously disappeared after the dismissal of her plunder case.”
In another case, the courts, citing his advanced age, allowed Juan Ponce Enrile to be released on bail after he spent time under hospital arrest for his plunder case. But another detainee, the cancer-stricken political prisoner Antonio Molina, died in detention after not being allowed to invoke Enrile’s release as a basis for being freed on humanitarian grounds.
“The injustice is indeed most striking when we consider the plight of elderly and ailing political prisoners who are incarcerated on trumped-up charges and do not deserve to spend a single minute in prison,” Palabay pointed out.
Eleven political prisoners died in detention during the Duterte regime, said Palabay, and none of them was shown any mercy or consideration for their illness and advanced age. Among them was 66-year old Bernabe Ocasla, a peasant organizer whose health deteriorated in detention.
Ocasla was among the elderly and sickly political prisoners whose release on humanitarian grounds was promised by Duterte. Yet his release never came. While in detention, he suffered uncontrolled hypertension and became partially blind, but was brought to hospital only when he suffered a heart attack and went into a coma. Notwithstanding his condition, his guards kept him cuffed to his hospital cot and did not allow him to have a change of clothing even if he was drenched in sweat. Never regaining consciousness, he died on November 28, 2016 after suffering two more heart attacks in three days.
“It is political prisoners like Bernabe Ocasla who are truly deserving of compassion,” stressed Palabay, “and not murderers and plunderers like Duterte, Arroyo and Estrada.”
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KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties. It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign.