Wednesday, September 24, 2008 Law Week forum urges lawyers to help fight for human rights
MEMBERS of civil society must take the role of human rights defenders, a lawyer yesterday said, as issues that infringe on basic human freedoms rise.
Lawyer Florisa Almodiel, a convenor of the Counsel for the Defense of Liberties (Codal), said issues like the “unwarranted presence” of the military in the countryside often result in coercion, intimidation, forced recruitment into paramilitary units, disappearances and killings.
“Often, these incidents are not documented because it is difficult to access areas where these incidents happen,” she said.
Those who try to do something, lawyers included, get labeled as “leftists” and “rebels” and face possible persecution with the Human Security Act, she added.
Cebu-based lawyer Gloria Estenzo-Ramos, for her part, urged lawyers to remember that their “fundamental priority is to the community” and not to focus solely on the cases they get.
“They have a role in the administration of justice,” she said.
She proposed a partnership between civil society organizations and law schools on the subject of paralegal training.
Almodiel and Ramos were a speaker and a reactor, respectively, in a forum on human rights and civil liberties yesterday, as part of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) Cebu and Cebu City’s observance of Law Week.
On the issue of military presence in the countryside, Almodiel cited what she claimed happened in the towns of Diatagon, Lianga and Buhisan in Surigao del Sur.
Soldiers from the Southern Command began arriving in November 2007 and immediately displaced around 2,000 indigenous people, forcing them to walk to an evacuation site some 15 kilometers from their villages.
The soldiers then forced some residents to act as guides as the military pursued New People’s Army (NPA) units, as well as made them unwitting accessories in illegal arrests.
The soldiers, she said in her presentation, occupied the home of some villages as well as a lumad (native community) school.
Military buildup is also starting in urban areas.
As early as 2006, she said in her presentation, troops have been seen in urban communities in the National Capital Region.
In one documented case, she said, a group of 18 urban poor teenagers was rounded up, interrogated and tortured. The youths were accused of being members of out-of-school gangs.
She warned that this might also happen here in Cebu, adding that groups like the Task Force Karapatan have reported the use of close-circuit television cameras to conduct surveillance during otherwise peaceful protests.
Almodiel urged civil society sectors to continue being sensitive to such issues, adding that protest actions that may be ignored by the National Government can be brought to the international arena.
She said the United Nations General Assembly has adopted a declaration that recognizes the right of everyone “to complain about the policies and actions of individual officials and governmental bodies with regard to violations of human rights.”
She said this was borne out when the European Union and the United States threatened to pull out aid to the National Government if the Arroyo administration does not resolve issues like extra-judicial killings and forced disappearances. (KNR)
