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PEN members had two guest speakers in last
Saturday’s meeting at the Solidaridad Bookstore—Supreme Court
justice Adolfo Azcuna and Marites Vitug, editor of Newsbreak
magazine. Both of them talked about extrajudicial killings, and both
presentations were enlightening.
We gathered from Justice Azcuna
that extrajudicial killings are summary executions (involving state
actors or state agents) of individuals perceived as “enemies of
the state.” The United Nations has used another term
“extralegal” killings which includes “nonstate actors” from
the Left (like the “sparrows”) and the Right (like the
vigilantes).
The justice narrated the events
leading to the holding of the summit where representatives of
government agencies, civil society and human-rights groups,
academics and others met to get at the bottom of the spate of
extrajudicial and enforced disappearances in the country—condemned
around the world.
The initial response of the
Supreme Court (SC) to the problem of impunity or failure of the GMA
administration in stopping the killings was to create special courts
throughout the country but apparently only a few cases were filed
because witnesses were afraid to testify. So the SC decided to hold,
prior to the summit, a conference or dialogue with other branches of
government and stakeholders on ways to resolve the problem. Hence,
the summit.
In the working groups, each led
by an SC justice, two most common recommendations were for a)
strengthening the witness protection program, and b) the resumption
of the peace talks. To most participants then, these two steps would
go a long way to end the series of extrajudicial killings and
enforced disappearances which are a blight not only on the GMA
administration but on the whole country.
The other recommendations of the
summit are to be forwarded to the government agencies concerned for
adoption or implementation. The call for the President to issue an
order to security agencies to stop the killings has not been heeded;
instead she asked Congress to enact laws.
The writ of amparo (never applied
in the Philippines) as a remedy for foolhardy state agencies in writ
of habeas corpus cases (like the case of Jonas Burgos) was discussed
with the justice. Visitation rights in state premises (like camps
and detention cells) can be exercised by the Commission of Human
Rights and the police under court supervision. What about “safe
houses” which the military will not reveal? That’s a problem,
the justice conceded.
The Supreme Court and Commission
on Human Rights will need all the moral support from concerned
citizens in pursuing the summit proposals, particularly on witness
protection and resumption of peace talks. With the Philippines as
one of the sponsors for a human rights commission in the Asean
charter, the GMA government should be the first to protect human
rights and civil liberties in its own country.
Marites Vitug focused on the
killings of an estimated 61 to 70 “bona fide” journalists since
the start of the GMA term—or about one journalist killed per
month. A record just behind Russia, Iraq and Colombia. She
attributes these killing, largely outside Manila, and involving
mostly broadcasters, to a context of poverty in the countryside weak
rule of law, political patronage, impunity, corruption and conflict
of interests.
In some cases the killings were
not work-related but as the Newsbreak editor points out, “murder
is murder” and the killers should be brought to justice. She urges
the professional journalist groups to adopt ethical standards in
journalism and the publishers to give decent wages so that sideline
work like public relations or endorsement of products need not be
resorted to by full-time journalists.
No distinction was made by
Philippine PEN between journalism and “creative writing” in
referring to writers. Journalists are “essayists” in the acronym
PEN which stands for poets, essayists and novelists.
Again, the case of Alex Pinpin, a
poet and NGO staffer, one of the Tagaytay Five, still languishing in
a military detention cell, was brought up. We gathered from the
report of the PEN International conference held recently in Senegal
that resolutions were passed for freedom of expression and for the
release of writers in prison in many countries like Afghanistan,
China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Mexico, Tibet, Tunisia, Turkey,
Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam and Africa. There were resolutions
for the safety of journalists, the linguistic rights of minorities
and defamation and insult laws.
On the latter, we asked about the
dropping by the “First Gentleman” of libel charges against
Marites Vitug et al. She said they still want the court to resolve
the cases because they want to be cleared. She feels that the
statement of the FG that he has forgiven them implies that they have
done something wrong, and they want this settled. “We have done
nothing wrong so why should we be forgiven?” Vitug said. The
writers concurred.
It was also brought out that 14
judges have been killed since 1999.
Signs of the times
More than three fourths (76.8
percent) of Filipinos this year refer to themselves as poor compared
to 69.3 percent last year, an IBON survey revealed.
While police were beating up
youth demonstrators outside the PICC venue, the US deputy secretary
of state was talking about respect for human rights at the Asean
ministers meeting.
The Presidential Antigraft
Commission denies rise in massive graft and corruption in the GMA
government but admits their investigation of the Bolante case is at
a standstill because of “lack of documents” like the Commission
on Audit report on the fertilizer scam.
Under the RP-Japan trade
agreement the Philippines excludes only two commodities from tariff
reduction while Japan protects 237 of its products. So this is how
free trade works.
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