Anakpawis decries ‘police desecration’ of slain NDFP consultant Echanis

The progressive Anakpawis party-list on Tuesday decried what they described as  "police desecration" of the remains of its chairperson and National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) consultant Randall "Randy" Echanis.

In a statement, Anakpawis said Echanis' widow Erlinda positively identified her husband's body, which bore "torture marks, multiple stab and gunshot wounds," in a funeral home in La Loma, Quezon City.

Erlinda and their relatives were able to transfer the body to a funeral house of their choice, but policemen came afterwards and forcibly took Echanis' remains, supposedly due to the absence of a "release order" from their office, and because  the cadaver was still "under investigation," the party-list added.

"This adds insult to our injury. It is both inhuman and unjust for the remains of my husband to be held under police custody and deprive us of having a proper and private mourning," Erlinda said.

"Why is my husband's cadaver under investigation in the first place? It should be the perpetrators that should be hunted down and persecuted, not the lifeless body of my husband!" she added.

For his part, former Anakpawis party-list Representative Ariel Casilao slammed what he called as the Philippine National Police's (PNP) "twisting and handwashing" of Echanis' murder.

By claiming that the dead body found in Novaliches was not Echanis but instead of a certain "Manuel Santiago," the PNP was "[brazenly attempting] to diminish Ka Randy's brutal killing as a mere common crime and not a politically-motivated extrajudicial killing," Anakpawis said.

The party-list also hit the police for apprehending the paralegal "keeping track" of Echanis' remains, supposedly for obstruction of justice.

"The police are the ones obstructing the justice for Ka Randy. Instead of going after the perpetrators, they fixate themselves to the families and a lifeless body attempting to cover-up the crime," Casilao said.

"This strengthens our suspicion that the state forces were really behind Echanis' murder," he added.

A peasant activist and peace consultant, Echanis, 72, was reported killed in Quezon City on Monday.

Echanis was a long-time NDFP consultant and a member of the NDFP committee on socio-economic reforms.

He was part of peace talks with the Duterte administration from 2016 to 2017, Anakpawis said. — BM, GMA News