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Friday, February 16, 2007
SC to form special courts for extrajudicial slays
MANILA -- The Supreme Court will establish special tribunals to try people suspected of carrying out extrajudicial killings, the chief justice said Thursday, after meeting a UN investigator to discuss the rising number of slain activists and journalists.
The special courts will be established within a week to speed up the trials, Chief Justice Reynato Puno said in a statement.
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Local human rights group Karapatan has listed 832 alleged summary killings, including the deaths of 356 left-wing activists, since 2001, and blamed security forces for their deaths.
The government has disputed the figures and said communist rebels were killing their own people as part of a purge within the 38-year-old underground movement.
Police said they have identified one soldier, one government militiaman, and one police officer in some of 21 killings they have solved.
A fact-finding commission created by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has concluded that soldiers were to blame for most of the killings, said its chairman, former Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo. But Arroyo has refused to release the report.
"The extrajudicial taking of life is the ultimate violation of human rights," Puno said after meeting UN human rights envoy Philip Alston. "It cannot be allowed anywhere, and it has to be resisted everywhere."
Arroyo and human rights groups invited the UN investigator to conduct his own probe. He will submit his findings to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, which typically recommends to governments measures to curb abuses.
Arroyo's spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, said Melo's report was being held from distribution "because it is still incomplete and at this point, inconclusive."
"With the inputs of the UN and other well-meaning agencies, hopefully we can come up with more comprehensive appreciation of the issue and undertake all means to resolve it permanently and close the book on it," he added in a statement.
Puno said the number of special courts required will depend on the number of cases in any particular area.
The largest left-wing alliance, Bayan, which alleges that some of its activists were among those killed, said Arroyo's decision not to release the report was "callous" toward the victims and a sign of "gross insincerity in stopping the cycle of state-sponsored violence."
European Union officials also said they will press for the report to be released.
Eneko Landaburu, the European Commission's director-general for external relations, told reporters that he met with Arroyo on Thursday to discuss the issue. Details of the meeting were not immediately available.
Dutch Ambassador Robert Vornis praised efforts by the Philippines to resolve the killings, including its request for international assistance. But he also requested that the government release the probe report.
"We've said to the government that we hope it would be released in due course," British Ambassador Peter Beckingham said.
Public Services International, a global trade union federation that sent a mission to look into the killings, condemned "the disregard for life and liberty" that has claimed the lives of 80 trade unionists.
PSI urged the government to put in place a transparent process of dialogue and a permanent independent monitoring mechanism for trade union and human rights abuses. (AP)
For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro. (February 16, 2007 issue)
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