Malacañang slams UN report on extrajudicial killings

Danny Chan

The Philippine government has denounced a United Nations report that censured it for failing to end extrajudicial killings in the country. Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez dismissed the report by Philip Alston, a UN special rapporteur, while questioning its fairness.

“We better just ignore it,” Mr. Gonzalez told reporters last month. “We cannot keep on stopping every time a dog barks. What we should do is just do our best to perform our tasks that are assigned to us within the limits of our authority and power.” He said although the 16-page follow-up report presented on April 29 should be “seriously” considered because it was submitted to the UN Human Rights Council, he opined on how Mr. Alston initially met with “the left” prior to contacting government officials.

“I think (the report) is unfair,” he said. “He was already prejudging us.” Eduardo Ermita, the president’s executive secretary and head of the presidential human rights committee, made a “good presentation” at UN meetings in Geneva on extrajudicial killings, Mr. Gonzalez added.

Anthony Golez, the deputy presidential spokesperson, said the report was “off tangent.” Mr. Golez said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had taken “bold steps” to rectify the situation; initiatives include the establishment of the Melo Commission which investigated the extrajudicial killings and the Task Force Usig which concentrated on solving such cases. The spokesperson added Malacañang opened the “entire government to outside scrutiny” by allowing the UN Human Rights Commission to investigate.

“Extrajudicial killings do not have a place in our democratic society and this is the reason why a lot of steps have been undertaken,” Mr. Golez told a press briefing. He said among the 836 alleged cases of extrajudicial killings cited by Karapatan, a human-rights non-governmental organization, Task Force Usig found 669 cases fell short of vigilante killings. Among 669 purported victims, six are alive, 23 were Abu Sayyaf members killed during a jailbreak, eight died in a labor dispute and another 108 died in “legitimate armed encounters”. Mr. Golez said other names on the list were victims of “other causes” including robbery, homicide and tribal war.

The Philippine military further lambasted the report, stating it should have encompassed a wider scope rather than restricting itself to leftist organizations.

“We should have appreciated it if more stakeholders were consulted because Alston’s report could have been only bases on reports he got from the leftists,” Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner Jr. said in an interview at Camp Aguinaldo on May 11. The Armed Forces of the Philippines spokesperson added the UN rapporteur should have corroborated his findings with victims of atrocities perpetrated by the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, because they could have provided a “bigger picture” of the situation.

Mr. Brawner further repudiated claims that the AFP was using the president’s decree to quash the insurgency by 2010 to justify its heavy-handed approach.

“Definitely, we’re not using that order from the President as an excuse to do any extrajudicial activities,” Mr. Brawner said, referring instead to orders from Lt. Gen. Victor Ibrado to quell civil strife “within the legal bounds”. Katarungan, a US-based Karapatan affiliate, announced last month it would stage an emergency summit scheduled for June 6 in Washington, D.C., to discuss the situation on human rights in the Philippines. The NGO’s coordinator, Katrina Abarcar, said Filipino-American activists would lobby America’s Congress to make action on eradicating extrajudicial executions a precondition for disbursing aid to the Philippines.

“In fact, we have basis to demand all US military aid and training to the Philippines be cut until the widespread problems, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, illegal arrests and politically motivated prosecutions of activists are indisputably solved,” Ms. Abarcar said was quoted as saying.

The report from the UN’s special rapporteur established a causal link between President Macapagal-Arroyo’s inaction and the rise in extrajudicial slayings. The report said the president’s policy remained “the justification of military officials in tagging political and civil society organizations as fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA).”

“Overall, the most important shortcoming has been the government’s failure to institutionalize or implement the many reforms that have been identified” the report said. “In the absence of such steps, the progress that has been made remains fragile and easily reversed. The government’s former actions in response to the special rapporteur’s recommendations have been symbolic, and lack the substantive and preventive dimensions necessary to end the culture of impunity.”

Mr. Alston’s report was preceded by a study published in April 2008; the investigation was initiated by recent developments such as vigilante killings in Davao City by the so-called Davao Death Squad and the ascension to the House of Representative of Jovito Palparan, a retired army major-general who allegedly orchestrated the killings of insurgents in Eastern Visayas and Luzon. An independent commission concluded Mr. Palparan and some of his superior officers could be held responsible for some of the extrajudicial murders.

Copyright ©2009 Danny Chan.   About The Author