By ANTHONY IAN CRUZ
Malaya
Nov. 23, 2007
THE country’s biggest human rights alliance and an umbrella of Protestant churches have submitted scathing reports to the United Nations Human Rights Council ahead of the review to be made on the Arroyo government’s human rights record slated for April 2008.
The April 2008 review will be a first for the Philippines under the new “universal periodic review” mechanism adopted by the UN General Assembly which will hold the country answerable to its obligations under international human rights conventions and treaties.
In its report to the UNHRC, the Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights (Karapatan) accused the Arroyo government of “making human rights violations a national policy.”
Karapatan secretary-general Marie Hilao Enriquez, who personally submitted the group’s report to the UNHRC in Geneva on Tuesday, said that “despite its formal commitment to or legal ratification of various international instruments, its enactment of a few legislative and executive measures, and even despite its belated condemnation of extrajudicial killings, the Filipino people are still subjected to continuing gross and systematic human rights violations amidst an atmosphere of impunity.”
The Karapatan report claimed the following: Victims of extrajudicial killings now number 886, including 96 women, 59 children, and 391 activists; victims of enforced disappearances have gone up to 179, including 29 women, four children and 61 activists; 53 journalists have been killed under Arroyo’s watch, according to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines; and there are 235 political prisoners, including 29 women, held in prisons nationwide; about 204 of them were arrested under Arroyo.
Karapatan said that “to date, none of the real perpetrators in the killings and disappearances has been convicted and punished, reflecting not only a failure of the criminal justice system to protect human rights but more so the resolve of the Arroyo administration to put an end to this outrage.”
Karapatan also said the Philippines has not ratified the Convention for the Protection of All Persons against Enforced Disappearance, and the Convention against Torture and other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
The Karapatan report blamed Oplan Bantay Laya, the government’s counterinsurgency program, as the culprit behind the violations. “The program has resulted in the persecution and assault of leaders and members of the legal democratic movement, as well as other organized and unorganized civilians. Massive troop deployment and military operations in the rural areas from 2003 to the present have virtually imposed a reign of terror in the program’s priority areas, namely, Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog, Bicol, Eastern Visayas and Northern Mindanao,” part of the report said.
The National Council of Churches in the Philippines report appealed to the UNHRC to “consider the deterioration of the human rights conditions in the Philippines as a special concern requiring the intervention of appropriate procedures to address the urgency of the situations.”
The NCCP asked the UNHRC to send a special fact-finding mission to the Philippines, and to recommend to the Arroyo government the establishment of an independent commission to conduct an impartial and credible investigation.
The NCCP report said incidence of human rights violations began to rise during the Philippines’ stint as UNHRC member from 2006 to the present. It condemned the Arroyo government for the extrajudicial killing of 25 church people, the frustrated murder of four others and the suicide of two who were allegedly tortured by the military.