Monday, August 04, 2008 GMA ‘next to Aquino’ in human rights abuses
IF A human rights advocate group’s statistics are to be believed, the Arroyo presidency has seen the second highest number of torture cases since 1974.
The Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP) recorded 269 victims of torture under the Arroyo administration as of Dec. 31, 2007. Most of these reportedly occurred in 2004, with 71 recorded cases of torture.
This, the group says, is second only to former president Corazon Aquino’s term, which allegedly saw 1,009 torture cases.
This claim is corroborated by the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA).
PAHRA issued a State of the Human Rights of the Nation as President Arroyo gave her State of the Nation Address (SONA) last Monday.
PAHRA, in the statement penned by its chairperson Max de Mesa, said that extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and torture have been “perpetrated against hundreds of persons who, in... opposing unjust policies of government... have been labeled as ‘enemies of the state’.”
Torture, according to the United Nations Convention on Torture (UNCAT), is done when physical or psychological harm is inflicted upon a person to make him admit to a crime or spill information.
PAHRA also decried Arroyo’s praise of retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan in her 2006 SONA. The group called Palparan’s treatment of the Communist insurgency “a bloody solution.”
The statement said that in 2007, the 2nd Division of the Court of Appeals found that Palparan participated in the abduction of Reymund and Reynaldo Manolo, both farmers and activists.
PAHRA also said that the Arroyo administration saw the killings of many “farmers, workers, indigenous people, journalists, women and men leaders of mass organizations.”
It quoted the Former Senior Government Officials (FSGO) group, which accused the Arroyo administration of “militarizing the bureaucracy.”
Among others, FSGO also criticized the present administration for allegedly “eroding the independence of the Supreme Court” and “cultivating a Malacañang wing of the church.”
Different levels
De Mesa then asked for “formations of human rights defenders” to be placed in different levels of society - the local, provincial, regional, island and national levels.
“These would multiply capacities for documenting and monitoring comprehensive human rights violations both by state and non-state entities,” PAHRA’s statement read.
The group further recommended that cases of human rights violations be brought before national, regional and international bodies.
Just last Thursday, representatives from civil, religious, youth and government sectors consulted together to come up with ideals for a proposed human rights body governing the Asia-Pacific region.
This regional human rights body was a provision in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations charter.
TFDP executive director Sr. Crescencia Lucero said that the regional human rights body “could be one of the alternatives for redress of human rights
offenses.” (KAB)
