Human rights in the Philippines
Encyclopedia
Human rights in the Philippines has been a subject of concern and controversy. According to U.S. Country Profile on the Philippines dated March 2006, the U.S. State Department reported that Philippine
security forces have been responsible for serious human rights
abuses despite the efforts of civilian authorities to control them. The report found that although the government generally respected human rights, some security forces elements—particularly the Philippine National Police
—practiced extrajudicial killings, vigilantism, disappearances, torture, and arbitrary arrest and detention in their battle against criminals and terrorists. Prison conditions were harsh, and the slow judicial process as well as corrupt police, judges, and prosecutors impaired due process and the rule of law. Besides criminals and terrorists, human rights activists, left-wing political activists, and Muslims were sometimes the victims of improper police conduct. Violence against women and abuse of children remained serious problems, and some children were pressed into slave labor and prostitution
.
On Wednesday December 7, 2006 International Labor Rights Fund
's Brian Campbell tried to enter the Philippines to continue investigations of recent human rights violations and murders in the Philippines. Mr. Campbell had previously visited the Philippines in early 2006 to investigate various deaths of trade unionists including Diosdado Fortuna. On Dec 7, Mr. Campbell was informed he was on a blacklist by the Filipino immigration authorities and was barred from entering the country. Mr. Campbell then was immediately forced to leave the country.
In 2007 Philip Alston
, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary executions, spent 10 days in the Philippines investigating these killings.
He spoke to witnesses and victims, as well as senior members of the military and the government, finding that witnesses have been systematically intimidated and harassed.
He says the military is implicated directly or indirectly in a significant number of deaths.
Victims over the past six years have included trade unionists, farmers' rights activists, people from indigenous communities, lawyers, journalists, human rights campaigners and people of religion.
The European Commission (EC) sent a six-man team of experts from the European Union (EU) to the Philippines on a 10-day mission to evaluate needs and identify technical assistance that the EU might provide to help its government prosecute those behind the killings.
It indicates the continuing murders of journalists and increased legal harassment in the form of libel suits as part of the problem in the Philippines.
Between 1986 to 2005, 52 journalists have been murdered.
says, in part, "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." The Covenant was adopted on December 10, 1948 and, as of 30 September 1995, had been ratified or acceded to by 132 States, including the Philippines.
The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration
(POEA), the main government agency assigned to monitor and supervise recruitment agencies in the Philippines, enforces a system of exit clearances for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). OFWs are required to obtain a POEA exit clearance in order to be allowed to leave the country. The process of obtaining a POEA exit clearances has been described in the Philippine press as a "nightmare". In a Philippine Daily Inquirer
piece dated July 14, 2011, Rigoberto Tiglao, Philippine ambassador to Greece
and Cyprus
, questioned the POEA exit clearances, opining that they may be unconstitutional. Article III Section 2 of the Philippine constitution provides, in part, that the right to travel shall not impaired except in the interest of national security, public safety, or public health, as may be provided by law.
, is fighting insurgents such as Islamic groups and the Communist New People's Army
.
A spate of extrajudicial killings, estimated by human rights groups at over 800 in the past five years, has put the Philippines on the human rights watch list of the United Nations and the US Congress. A UN special rapporteur criticized the Arroyo administration for not doing enough to stop the killings, many of which had been linked to government anti-insurgency operations. Interior Assistant Secretary Danilo Valero said the sharp decline, 83%, in the number of political killings last year, as well as the filing of cases against the suspects, “underline the Arroyo government’s strong commitment to human rights and its firm resolve to put an end to these unexplained killings and put their perpetrators behind bars.” Task Force Usig was created in 2006 as the government’s response to the extrajudicial killings. Valero said the yearend statistics showed “the creation of the task force has been a deterrent” to such crimes.
According to Cher S Jimenez writing in Asia Times Online, as of 2007, there is an increasing international awareness of the extrajudicial harassment, torture, disappearances and murder of Filipino civilian non-combatants by the Philippine's military and police. Since the advent of the "War on Terrorism" in 2001, the people of the Philippines have witnessed the assassinations of more than 850 mainstream journalists and other public figures and the harassment, detention, or torture of untold more.
As of December, 2003, the human rights watchdog KARAPATAN had documented human rights violations against 169,530 individuals, 18,515 families, 71 communities, and 196 households. One person, it said, was being killed every three days under the Macapagal-Arroyo government or a total of 271 persons as of December 2003.
E. San Juan, Jr.
writes that estimates of killings vary on the precise number, with Task Force Usig estimating only 114. It has failed to gain any convictions, and as of February 2007 had only arrested 3 suspects in the over 100 cases of assassination. The online publication Bulatlat states that "[A]ccording to a recent international fact-finding mission of Dutch and Belgian judges and lawyers, Task Force Usig 'has not proven to be an independent body…the PNP has a poor record as far as the effective investigation of the killings is concerned and is mistrusted by the Philippine people." Task Force Usig dismissed nearly half of the 114 cases of assassination as "cold" and, of the 58 cases where charges were brought, has secured only convictions only twice.
Amnesty International states that the more than 860 confirmed murders are clearly political in nature because of "the methodology of the attacks, including prior death threats and patterns of surveillance by persons reportedly linked to the security forces, the leftist profile of the victims and climate of impunity which, in practice, shields the perpetrators from prosecution." The AI report continues:
Human Rights Watch, in a 2008 report, reported
Human Rights Watch writes that the murders and kidnappings are rarely investigated by the police or other government agencies; they often go unreported because of fears of reprisal against the victims or their families. The Philippine National Police blame investigative failures on this reluctance, but as Human Rights Watch writes:
According to commentators James Petras
and Robin Eastman-Abaya, "Human rights groups provide evidence that death squads operate under the protective umbrella of regional military commands, especially the U.S.-trained Special Forces.
2006 is also the year President Arroyo issued Presidential Proclamation 1017. According to Cher S Jimenez writing in Asia Times Online
, this proclamation "grants exceptional unchecked powers to the executive branch", placing the country in a state of emergency and permitting the police and security forces to "conduct warrantless arrests against enemies of the state, including...members of the political opposition and journalists from critical media outlets." With 185 dead, 2006 is so far (2007) the highest annual mark for extrajudicial government murders. Of the 2006 killings, the dead were "mostly left-leaning activists, murdered without trial or punishment for the perpetrators." The issuance of the proclamation conspicuously coincided with a dramatic increase in political violence and extrajudicial killings.
E. San Juan, Jr.
alleges that the Arroyo government initially made no response to the dramatic increase in violence and killings. He writes, "Arroyo has been tellingly silent over the killing and abduction of countless members of opposition parties and popular organizations." An independent commission was assembled in August 2006 to investigate the killings. Headed by former Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo
, the group known as the Melo Commission concluded that most of the killings were instigated by the Armed Forces of the Philippines
, but found no proof linking the murder of activists to a "national policy" as claimed by the left-wing groups. On the other hand the report "linked state security forces to the murder of militants and recommended that military officials, notably retired major general Jovito Palparan
, be held liable under the principle of command responsibility for killings in their areas of assignment." E. San Juan, Jr. writes that later, in February 2007, UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston implicated the Philippine police and military as responsible for the crimes. Alston charged in his report that Arroyo’s propaganda and counter-insurgency strategy “encourage or facilitate the extra-judicial killings of activists and other enemies” of the state. and that "the AFP remains in a state of almost total denial… of its need to respond effectively and authentically to the significant number of killings which have been convincingly attributed to them".
Publicly, Arroyo has condemned political killings "in the harshest possible terms" and urged witnesses to come forward.
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
security forces have been responsible for serious human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
abuses despite the efforts of civilian authorities to control them. The report found that although the government generally respected human rights, some security forces elements—particularly the Philippine National Police
Philippine National Police
The Philippine National Police is the national police force of the Republic of the Philippines. It is both a national and a local police force in that it does provides all law enforcement services throughout the Philippines...
—practiced extrajudicial killings, vigilantism, disappearances, torture, and arbitrary arrest and detention in their battle against criminals and terrorists. Prison conditions were harsh, and the slow judicial process as well as corrupt police, judges, and prosecutors impaired due process and the rule of law. Besides criminals and terrorists, human rights activists, left-wing political activists, and Muslims were sometimes the victims of improper police conduct. Violence against women and abuse of children remained serious problems, and some children were pressed into slave labor and prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
.
On Wednesday December 7, 2006 International Labor Rights Fund
International Labor Rights Fund
The International Labor Rights Forum is a nonprofit advocacy organization headquartered in Washington, DC that describes itself as "an advocate for and with the working poor around the world". ILRF, formerly the International Labor Rights Education & Research Fund, was founded in 1986...
's Brian Campbell tried to enter the Philippines to continue investigations of recent human rights violations and murders in the Philippines. Mr. Campbell had previously visited the Philippines in early 2006 to investigate various deaths of trade unionists including Diosdado Fortuna. On Dec 7, Mr. Campbell was informed he was on a blacklist by the Filipino immigration authorities and was barred from entering the country. Mr. Campbell then was immediately forced to leave the country.
United Nations investigation
Since 2001 when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo began her term in office over 800 people have been victims of extra - judicial killings.In 2007 Philip Alston
Philip Alston
Philip G. Alston is an international law scholar and human rights practitioner. He is John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, and co-Chair of the law school's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice...
, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary executions, spent 10 days in the Philippines investigating these killings.
He spoke to witnesses and victims, as well as senior members of the military and the government, finding that witnesses have been systematically intimidated and harassed.
He says the military is implicated directly or indirectly in a significant number of deaths.
Victims over the past six years have included trade unionists, farmers' rights activists, people from indigenous communities, lawyers, journalists, human rights campaigners and people of religion.
The European Commission (EC) sent a six-man team of experts from the European Union (EU) to the Philippines on a 10-day mission to evaluate needs and identify technical assistance that the EU might provide to help its government prosecute those behind the killings.
Press freedom
The fifth annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index released by the international press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has ranked the Philippines among the worst-ranked countries for 2006 at 142nd place.It indicates the continuing murders of journalists and increased legal harassment in the form of libel suits as part of the problem in the Philippines.
Between 1986 to 2005, 52 journalists have been murdered.
Freedom to travel
Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human RightsUniversal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
says, in part, "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." The Covenant was adopted on December 10, 1948 and, as of 30 September 1995, had been ratified or acceded to by 132 States, including the Philippines.
The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration
Philippine Overseas Employment Administration
The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration is an agency of the Government of the Philippines responsible for opening the benefits of the overseas employment program of the Philippines. It is the main government agency assigned to monitor and supervise recruitment agencies in the Philippines...
(POEA), the main government agency assigned to monitor and supervise recruitment agencies in the Philippines, enforces a system of exit clearances for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). OFWs are required to obtain a POEA exit clearance in order to be allowed to leave the country. The process of obtaining a POEA exit clearances has been described in the Philippine press as a "nightmare". In a Philippine Daily Inquirer
Philippine Daily Inquirer
The Philippine Daily Inquirer, popularly known as the Inquirer, is the most widely read broadsheet newspaper in the Philippines, with a daily circulation of 260,000 copies. It is one of the Philippines' newspapers of record...
piece dated July 14, 2011, Rigoberto Tiglao, Philippine ambassador to Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
and Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
, questioned the POEA exit clearances, opining that they may be unconstitutional. Article III Section 2 of the Philippine constitution provides, in part, that the right to travel shall not impaired except in the interest of national security, public safety, or public health, as may be provided by law.
Other allegations
The Philippine government, currently headed by the elected President Benigno Aquino IIIBenigno Aquino III
Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III , also known as Noynoy Aquino or PNoy, is a Filipino politician who has been the 15th and current President of the Philippines since June 2010....
, is fighting insurgents such as Islamic groups and the Communist New People's Army
New People's Army
The New People's Army is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. It was formed on March 29, 1969. The Maoist NPA conducts its armed guerrilla struggle based on the strategical line of 'protracted people's war'.The NPA exacts so called "revolutionary taxes" from business owners...
.
A spate of extrajudicial killings, estimated by human rights groups at over 800 in the past five years, has put the Philippines on the human rights watch list of the United Nations and the US Congress. A UN special rapporteur criticized the Arroyo administration for not doing enough to stop the killings, many of which had been linked to government anti-insurgency operations. Interior Assistant Secretary Danilo Valero said the sharp decline, 83%, in the number of political killings last year, as well as the filing of cases against the suspects, “underline the Arroyo government’s strong commitment to human rights and its firm resolve to put an end to these unexplained killings and put their perpetrators behind bars.” Task Force Usig was created in 2006 as the government’s response to the extrajudicial killings. Valero said the yearend statistics showed “the creation of the task force has been a deterrent” to such crimes.
According to Cher S Jimenez writing in Asia Times Online, as of 2007, there is an increasing international awareness of the extrajudicial harassment, torture, disappearances and murder of Filipino civilian non-combatants by the Philippine's military and police. Since the advent of the "War on Terrorism" in 2001, the people of the Philippines have witnessed the assassinations of more than 850 mainstream journalists and other public figures and the harassment, detention, or torture of untold more.
As of December, 2003, the human rights watchdog KARAPATAN had documented human rights violations against 169,530 individuals, 18,515 families, 71 communities, and 196 households. One person, it said, was being killed every three days under the Macapagal-Arroyo government or a total of 271 persons as of December 2003.
E. San Juan, Jr.
E. San Juan, Jr.
Epifanio San Juan, Jr., also known as E. San Juan, Jr. , is a known Filipino American literary academic, mentor, cultural reviewer, civic intellectual, activist, writer, essayist, video/film maker, editor, and poet whose works related to the Filipino Diaspora in English and Filipino languages have...
writes that estimates of killings vary on the precise number, with Task Force Usig estimating only 114. It has failed to gain any convictions, and as of February 2007 had only arrested 3 suspects in the over 100 cases of assassination. The online publication Bulatlat states that "[A]ccording to a recent international fact-finding mission of Dutch and Belgian judges and lawyers, Task Force Usig 'has not proven to be an independent body…the PNP has a poor record as far as the effective investigation of the killings is concerned and is mistrusted by the Philippine people." Task Force Usig dismissed nearly half of the 114 cases of assassination as "cold" and, of the 58 cases where charges were brought, has secured only convictions only twice.
Amnesty International states that the more than 860 confirmed murders are clearly political in nature because of "the methodology of the attacks, including prior death threats and patterns of surveillance by persons reportedly linked to the security forces, the leftist profile of the victims and climate of impunity which, in practice, shields the perpetrators from prosecution." The AI report continues:
Human Rights Watch, in a 2008 report, reported
Human Rights Watch writes that the murders and kidnappings are rarely investigated by the police or other government agencies; they often go unreported because of fears of reprisal against the victims or their families. The Philippine National Police blame investigative failures on this reluctance, but as Human Rights Watch writes:
According to commentators James Petras
James Petras
James Petras is a retired Bartle Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada who has published prolifically on Latin American and Middle Eastern political issues.-Academic and...
and Robin Eastman-Abaya, "Human rights groups provide evidence that death squads operate under the protective umbrella of regional military commands, especially the U.S.-trained Special Forces.
2006 is also the year President Arroyo issued Presidential Proclamation 1017. According to Cher S Jimenez writing in Asia Times Online
Asia Times Online
Asia Times Online is a bilingual English‒Chinese, Internet-based newspaper covering geopolitics, politics, economics and business "from an Asian perspective"...
, this proclamation "grants exceptional unchecked powers to the executive branch", placing the country in a state of emergency and permitting the police and security forces to "conduct warrantless arrests against enemies of the state, including...members of the political opposition and journalists from critical media outlets." With 185 dead, 2006 is so far (2007) the highest annual mark for extrajudicial government murders. Of the 2006 killings, the dead were "mostly left-leaning activists, murdered without trial or punishment for the perpetrators." The issuance of the proclamation conspicuously coincided with a dramatic increase in political violence and extrajudicial killings.
E. San Juan, Jr.
E. San Juan, Jr.
Epifanio San Juan, Jr., also known as E. San Juan, Jr. , is a known Filipino American literary academic, mentor, cultural reviewer, civic intellectual, activist, writer, essayist, video/film maker, editor, and poet whose works related to the Filipino Diaspora in English and Filipino languages have...
alleges that the Arroyo government initially made no response to the dramatic increase in violence and killings. He writes, "Arroyo has been tellingly silent over the killing and abduction of countless members of opposition parties and popular organizations." An independent commission was assembled in August 2006 to investigate the killings. Headed by former Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo
Jose Melo
Jose Armando R. Melo is a Filipino lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines from 1992 to 2002. He is a former Chairman of the Commission on Elections , and was succeeded by election lawyer Sixto Brillantes.-Early life and education:Melo was born...
, the group known as the Melo Commission concluded that most of the killings were instigated by the Armed Forces of the Philippines
Armed Forces of the Philippines
The Armed Forces of the Philippines is composed of the Philippine Army, Philippine Navy and Philippine Air Force...
, but found no proof linking the murder of activists to a "national policy" as claimed by the left-wing groups. On the other hand the report "linked state security forces to the murder of militants and recommended that military officials, notably retired major general Jovito Palparan
Jovito Palparan
Jovito Salvaña Palparan, Jr. is a Filipino Congressman representing the Bantay party-list group in the 14th Congress of the Philippines. He is also a retired army general, who was a prominent figure in the campaign against communist insurgents in the Philippines...
, be held liable under the principle of command responsibility for killings in their areas of assignment." E. San Juan, Jr. writes that later, in February 2007, UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston implicated the Philippine police and military as responsible for the crimes. Alston charged in his report that Arroyo’s propaganda and counter-insurgency strategy “encourage or facilitate the extra-judicial killings of activists and other enemies” of the state. and that "the AFP remains in a state of almost total denial… of its need to respond effectively and authentically to the significant number of killings which have been convincingly attributed to them".
Publicly, Arroyo has condemned political killings "in the harshest possible terms" and urged witnesses to come forward.
See also
- Extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances in the PhilippinesExtrajudicial killings and forced disappearances in the PhilippinesExtrajudicial killings and forced disappearances in the Philippines refer to the illegal liquidations, unlawful or felonious killings and forced disappearances in the Philippines...
- KarapatanKarapatanKarapatan, which translates as rights, is a human rights non-governmental organization in the Philippines. The full name of the group is KARAPATAN: Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights.-History:...
- Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights - a Filipino Human Rights Organization - Crispin BeltranCrispin BeltranCrispin 'Ka Bel' Beltran was a Filipino politician and a labor leader. A staunch critic of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, his imprisonment in 2006 and 2007 on disputed charges of rebellion and sedition drew international attention...
and Satur OcampoSatur OcampoSaturnino Cunanan Ocampo is a former Filipino partylist representative, journalist, and writer. As party president and first nominee, he led the partylist group Bayan Muna in three successful elections. He was a member of the House of Representatives, and Deputy Minority Leader in the 14th...
- Two Congressmen who are being held as political prisoners in the Philippines - Children in jail in PhilippinesChildren in jail in PhilippinesChildren in jail in the Philippines continues to be a significant problem.According to Amnesty International, over 50,000 children in the Philippines have been arrested and detained since 1995....
- Over 50,000 children in the Philippines have been arrested and detained in Jails since 1995. - Corruption in the PhilippinesCorruption in the PhilippinesThe Republic of the Philippines suffers from widespread corruption. Means of corruption include graft, bribery, embezzlement, backdoor deals, nepotism, patronage.- Corruption levels :...