MALAYA: New writ further protecting rights readied

By ANTHONY IAN CRUZ
Malaya
Nov. 20, 2007

CHIEF Justice Reynato Puno yesterday said the tribunal is preparing to introduce the writ of habeas data which he said will protect the constitutional rights especially of victims of human rights violations and of journalists.

“We are studying further how to strengthen the role of the judiciary as the last bulwark of defense against the violation of the constitutional rights of our people especially the right to life and liberty by the use of habeas data,” he said before the Unesco policy forum and organizational meeting in Pasig City.

Puno vowed to promulgate before the end of the year the rules on the writ of habeas data which he said is the latest legal mechanism being developed to address the “chilling” rise in the incidents of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

The writ of habeas data, he said, refers to the right of citizens to find out the truth.

“The right to truth is fundamental to citizens… This right entitles families the families of disappeared persons to know the totality of truth surrounding the fate of their relatives.”

Puno said the exercise of the right is “particularly crucial in disappearances driven by politics because they usually involve secret execution of detainees without trial, followed by the concealment of the body with the purpose of erasing all material traces of the crime and securing impunity for the perpetrators.”

The Argentine Supreme Court, he said, ruled that the writ of habeas data was available to families of the deceased in a case involving extralegal killings and enforced disappearances. It gave the victims access to police and military records otherwise closed to them.

“In essence, the decision established the truth,” he said.

Puno also said the Argentinean model “guarantees the confidentiality of personal or private information and makes specific the protection of journalistic privilege, of the lofty democratic role of the press” by including in the writ of habeas data “the judicial remedy to enforce one’s right to access, rectify, update or destroy data gathered by government and private entities.”

Aside from Argentina, other countries that have adopted the writ of habeas data include Germany, Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru and Ecuador, he said.

In Paraguay, he said, the habeas data not only gives individuals the right to find out what information is being kept from them but also seeks to protect the right to find out what use and for what purpose such data are being collected.

“The petitioner is also given the opportunity to question the data and demand their ‘updating, rectification, or destruction,’” he said.

Puno said the introduction of the writ of habeas data will be based on the constitutional provision granting the Supreme Court the power to adopt rules protecting citizens’ constitutional rights, the same basis cited for the rule of amparo which became effective on Oct. 24.

Through a petition for the issuance of a writ of habeas data, a person can ask the court to allow him to find out what information is held about his person.

That person can also request the rectification, actualization or even the destruction of the personal data being held. The legal nature of the individual complaint of habeas data is that of voluntary jurisdiction, this means that the person whose privacy is being compromised can be the only one to present it. The courts do not have any power to initiate the process by themselves.

The proposal to make use of the writ of habeas data came following the high court’s promulgation of the rule on the writ of amparo, which aims to support the writ of habeas corpus. – With Evangeline de Vera