Human rights in the Philippines: Still a ‘work in progress’

THE protection of one’s rights is deemed universal, cutting across social strata, guaranteed to everyone, everywhere, at all times. In many parts of the world, however, realities indicate that such universality of social justice has yet to be achieved.

Here in the Philippines, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) last Wednesday came as an opportunity for civil society groups to assert calls for government accountability in the wake of human rights violations committed in the country.

Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights), for one, claimed that the Filipinos’ right to life, liberty, and security, as enshrined in the Declaration and the 1987 Constitution, has remained a “paper promise.”

In its latest report on the Philippine human rights situation, the Alliance said that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s administration has not lived up to its promise of respecting the dignity and fulfilling the rights of Filipinos.

“Since its (Arroyo administration) assumption to power in January 2001, this regime has been more interested in preserving its political and economic self-interest rather than the well-being of its people,” the report said. “Government has instead unleashed the brutality of its armed forces against the very people whose lives it has sworn to protect.”

Karapatan’s public information officer Ruth Cervantes added: “Palaging sinasabi na kailangan estado ang dapat magprotekta sa mamamayan (It is always said that it is the State’s responsibility to protect its citizens). This is why human rights organizations have always kept watch on the government — not because we want to topple it (like what the government says) — but because these watchdog groups should always address the accountability of the State. And that the State must always be accountable to its citizens.”

The 32-page report revealed that while global triumphs of advocacy for human rights are celebrated, social justice remains a “work in progress” in the Philippines.

Read Karapatan’s Human Rights Report 2008. Download Karapatan’s previous annual reports here.

Keeping score

From January to October this year, Karapatan recorded 50 cases of extrajudicial killings while seven persons have disappeared involuntarily. Since 2001, 977 victims of extrajudicial killing and 201 victims of enforced disappearance have been documented.

In the past ten months, too, 53 cases of torture and 138 cases of illegal arrest have been recorded, bringing the total number of victims in eight years to 1,010 and 1,464, respectively.

Source: Karapatan

Undersecretary Severo Catura, executive director of the Presidential Human Rights Committee (PHRC), however, pointed out that a large discrepancy exists between PHRC’s record of extrajudicial killings with that of Karapatan’s.

As of November 21, 2008, a total of 259 cases of extrajudicial killings were documented since 2001 by the government under Task Force 211 (Task Force Against Political Violence), a body created in 2007 to address issues of extrajudicial killings by monitoring the progress or litigation of political violence cases.

Source: Task Force 211

Note: Total number of incidents is 232. Some have resulted into the more than one case, thereby resulting into 259 cases.

The Committee’s database, Catura said, is the consolidation of cases filed with the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Philippine National Police‘s (PNP) Task Force Usig, and the Office of the Ombudsman.

Karapatan, though, has documented 977 victims of extrajudicial killings since 2001.

Numbers recorded by State agencies, according to the group, have always been significantly low because majority of the victims of rights violation, or their families, do not report their cases to state authorities due to fear or lack of trust.

In most of these cases, Karapatan said that rights violations are suspected to have been committed by the police or the military.

Moreover, its 2008 report indicated that Oplan Bantay Laya (Operation Plan Freedom Watch), which was supposed to defeat the armed communist insurgency before 2010, was used instead to train the guns of the armed forces against leaders and organizers of the public opposition.

Last June, Ambassador Erlinda Basilio, the country’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, made a clarification on the report on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions submitted by the UN Special Rapporteur, Professor Philip Alston.

Ambassador Basilio reportedly said that allegations of extrajudicial killings have been exaggerated for political purposes, noting that of the 836 alleged cases listed by Karapatan as of May 2007, only 121 or 14 percent were found to be probable extrajudicial killings.

PHRC’s Catura added that his office is doing its best and that it is looking into the organization’s report. He said that the Committee also sent a letter to Karapatan dated last November 26, requesting the exact details on their extrajudicial killings cases-on-file, specifically the record for 2008, which was reported in newspapers recently.

The reason for this, he said, is so PHRC could farm out the cases to the appropriate agencies, verify their nature, and secure updates. Catura said he has not received any response from Karapatan until now.

Karapatan’s Cervantes said that they are willing to talk with PHRC as long as the agenda is clear and will be done in good faith.

Drop in cases

Karapatan’s report also noted the significant drop in politically motivated extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances in 2007.

Cases of extrajudicial killings have gone down to 94 in 2007 from a high of 220 in 2006. Enforced disappearances, meanwhile, dropped to 30 victims in 2007 from a high of 93 the previous year.

Source: Karapatan

“It appears that the decline in reported incidences of extrajudicial killings is a mere tactical ploy of the Arroyo regime to appease global public outrage,” the report said. “It was never the result of any genuine concern over the worsening human rights situation nor of any measure taken by government to arrest, prosecute, and convict those allegedly responsible for the atrocities.”

Alston, the UN rapporteur who indicated the probable culpability of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on the killings, was more categorical in his observation, saying: “The decrease in number (of extrajudicial killings), while a cause to congratulate, is likewise a cause to condemn because it merely shows clearly who are behind the extrajudicial killings.”

PHRC’s Catura said that the government does regard loss of lives, but the notable drop of cases in the past two years is already consolation enough.

Lawyers group’s call

While cases of extrajudicial killings may have gone down, the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) is seeing an apparent change in tactic: the indiscriminate filing of cases against human-rights advocates and NGO workers, now being done by means of “John Doe” cases.

“The arrest and detention of human rights advocates on baseless and trumped up charges is intended not only to neutralize them but deter others from joining the cause of human rights,” said FLAG chairperson Atty. Jose Manuel Diokno in a statement released last Tuesday, calling on the government to stop such actions.

Read FLAG’s statement.

The group also called for the abolition of the Inter-Agency Legal Action Group (IALAG), a body created to coordinate government cases against insurgents.

“The problem with IALAG is that it does more than just coordinate,” said Diokno. “It adopts strategies to ‘fight against threats to national security’ often without regard to their impact on human rights.”

Karapatan also decried IALAG’s moves, saying these have paralyzed cause-oriented organizations by slapping fabricated charges against their leaders. “This is seen in charges and warrants issued against 72 persons in the Southern Tagalog Region, six of whom are now jailed on the basis of such trumped-up charges and warrants,” the report said.

Arroyo’s order

Meanwhile, President Arroyo signed Administrative Order 249 on Wednesday to strengthen the protection of human rights. “The Philippine government deems it fit to mark this (UDHR anniversary) event by further strengthening its existing policies, plans, and programs in accordance with the specific principles, rights and freedom specifically identified in the UDHR as a manifestation of its commitment to fully comply and abide by the tenets of the declaration,” Arroyo said in the order.

Under AO 249, agencies have been given specific directives to uphold basic rights. The Justice department, for example, is directed to use all legal means for the swift and just resolution of cases of alleged human rights violations against political and media personalities as well as leaders in the labor, urban poor and agricultural sector. It is also directed to implement a comprehensive legal education campaign that will inform the citizens of their rights.

Proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, the UDHR is the foundation of international human rights law, the first universal statement on the basic principles of inalienable human rights, and a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.