What do the Alabang, Paranaque and Quezon City incidents, the Kuratong Baleleng rubout, the suspicious slays of crusading journalists and the murders of nearly a thousand activists have in common?

They are all arguably extrajudicial or extralegal killings — deliberate murders of individuals by elements or agents of the state, with approval or sanction by superiors, without due process or outside of the law, and most of them are politically-motivated

The lack of a law criminalizing extrajudicial and extralegal killings and the state’s dominance of the investigation and prosecution processes have allowed these murders to go unpunished. That’s apart from state sanction for many of the murders, for instance, of left-wing activists, a matter gleefully accomplished by so-called death squads especially those under the command and/or inspiration of the likes of the unrepentant “butcher”, retired Army Major Gen. Jovito Palparan.

What is worrisome about the issue is that there’s hardly a national outrage while in certain parts of the country, people actually welcome these extrajudicial or extralegal killings. It is as if there nothing wrong with snuffing the life out of a person without due process (you’re a carnapper or a kidnapper or a vagrant, so you’re as good as dead) and for political reasons (that’s what you get for raising hell over the administration’s corruption and misadministration).

Journalists from various trimedia news organizations, campus journalists and this blogger gathered last weekend at Estancia Resort Hotel in Tagaytay City for a training on reporting human rights and extrajudicial killings under the auspices of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) and Newsbreak magazine and it was an opportunity for collective study, clarification and reflection.

Speakers included Commission on Human Rights chair Leila de Lima, UP vice president for legal affairs Theodore Te, PCIJ executive director Malou Mangahas, PCIJ research director Rowena Paraan, ABC-TV5 news manager Ed Lingao, Newsbreak reporters Aries Rufo and Carmela Fonbuena, Karapatan secretary-general Marie Hilao Enriquez, and a team from the Philippine National Police public information and human rights affairs offices.

Te, who is also a well-known human rights lawyer, confronted false notions about extrajudicial or extralegal slays, repeatedly asking “so what?” if the suspects were supposedly criminals? He stressed that even police manuals and standard operating procedures seek the arrest or demobilization, not liquidation, of suspects in manhunt or pursuit operations because the objective remains to bring them to court and have the court punish them in a civilized manner.

It is also good to learn that the CHR, under the able leadership of Chairperson De Lima, seems hell-bent in exercising its prerogatives and fulfilling its mandate to protect the people’s rights especially on  the issue of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. For instance, the CHR wants to set up its own, independent forensics laboratory for use in human rights violations cases — which is especially useful when soldiers and policemen are involved in the killings.

Reporting on activist murders and on the unending acts of corruption in the provinces have put journalists’ in the line of fire: 100 journalists have been killed since 1986 and most of them under the reign of President Arroyo. The PCIJ-Newsbreak training is a welcome reprieve for some journalists who survived the onslaught of those slighted by honest and competent reportage, and a wake-up call for all attendees to seriously consider taking safety precautions as they cover sensitive issues.

The training provided both conceptual and practical lessons. We studied international and domestic human rights statutes on extrajudicial killings, and we also touched on how to actually cover such human rights violations as professional and citizen journalists. We took note of the conflicting views of the state and human rights groups on the issue, and took a crash course on  media safety. Veteran journalists shared their experiences and insights on coverage — how to get the meat of the story responsibly, competently and hopefully safely.

Rufo, who became the first Filipino winner of the Lorenzo Natali Prize for human rights reporting, made us all laugh about some light moments of his travails in studying the murders of judges. The sobering lessons were how his life got threatened as he pursued a thread in the multi-threaded story, the difficult choices he had to make, and the limited time, resources and opportunities for further investigation.

Fonbuena, who went to the blood-soaked land of Bicolandia where scores of activists have been killed, is lucky to have escaped unscathed after forgetting reminders on keeping safe.  The prestigious JVO Awards later recognized her brave effort to shed light on the slays happening all over the foot of Mayon.

Hopefully, bloggers and citizen journalists take on more human rights issues in the future.