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THE 29th National Disability Prevention and
Rehabilitation Week on July 17 to 23 highlights the government’s
efforts toward the prevention of the causes of disabilities and the
rehabilitation and equalization of opportunities for people with
disabilities. This event aims to pay homage to the approximately 8.5
million Filipinos with disabilities whom we consider one of the
least recognized sectors of the Philippine society.
The celebration culminates on the
birthday of one of our great heroes, Apolinario Mabini, the
“Sublime Paralytic.”
The celebration reaffirms the
universality, individuality, interdependence and interrelatedness of
human rights and fundamental freedoms toward the disabled persons’
need for full enjoyment without discrimination. It highlights the
need to help provide for avenues for their full participation in all
aspects of life on an equal basis with others. This includes the
physical environment; transportation; information and communication,
information technologies and systems; and other facilities and
services provided to the public in urban and rural areas.
The adoption by the United
Nations on December 6, 2006, of the Convention on the Rights and
Dignity of Persons with Disabilities has provided then alternative
measures and approaches for improving the effective enjoyment of
their human rights and fundamental freedoms as a way to attain
success.
More significantly, the approval
into law last April 30, 2007, by President Arroyo of Republic Act
9442, has mandated greater equity in terms of benefits and
privileges that could boost their morale and help them attain more
success.
We congratulate the National
Council for the Welfare of Disabled Persons, the Department of
Transportation and Communications and the members of the National
Working Committee for spearheading the celebration.
Command responsibility
One of the very good things that
emerged from the High Court-led summit on extrajudicial killings and
forced disapperances is the revival of interest in the concept of
command responsibility in relation to these crimes.
The command-responsibility
doctrine originally applied only to the military but now extends to
civilian officials. Military commanders are responsible for the acts
of the officers and men under them. If subordinates commit
violations of the laws of war, and their commanders fail to prevent
or punish these crimes, then the commanders also can be held
responsible.
Command responsibility gained
publicity after World War II, with the trials of Japanese and German
war criminals. But Western civilization always had the
well-established principle that the liege or lord is responsible for
the actions of his vassals, a principle that came to be written down
in military codes and laws of the realm.
In 15th-century Europe, King
Charles VII of Orleans decreed that his military commanders were
liable for crimes committed by people under them against civilians,
whether or not a commander himself had a hand in the crimes.
The American government adopted
the Lieber Code (after the Columbia University professor who worked
on it) —that spells out the rules of warfare and engagement—
just as the US Civil War was about to break out.
But the universally-accepted
standard of command responsibility only came to be established on
the creation of the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals—formally the
International Military Tribunal for the Prosecution and Punishment
of the Major War Criminals of the European Axis and the
International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
Later in the Vietnam War, the
standard of command responsibility took on an even more contemporary
currency.
A military commander is either
criminally or civilly liable under the doctrine of command
responsibility, when the prosecution proves that:
1) those committing the
atrocities/war crimes were under the command of the defendant
2) the commanders knew or should
have known, based on the surrounding circumstances at the time, that
their subordinates were engaging in impermissible conduct; and
3) the commanders did nothing to
prevent or punish those responsible for the commission of such
crimes.
Apart from heads of state—ike
the American and Filipino presidents—being the commander-in-chief
of their countries’ armed forces, the command-responsibility
doctrine now extends to civilian authorities who exercise control
over military forces. In the post-World War II prosecutions in
Nuremberg and Tokyo, some civilian authorities were convicted of war
crimes. A civilian, Koki Hirota, Japan’s World War II prime minister,
was held criminally liable as a commander. The International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (“ICTY”) and the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (“ICTR”) have judged
civilian executives criminally liable for the actions of
paramilitary and military forces they controlled. In February 2001,
the ICTY found Dario Kordiç, a Bosnian Croat political leader,
guilty under command responsibility of violating the Geneva
Conventions, of crimes against humanity, and violations of the laws
and customs of war for the actions of Bosnian Croat militia
forces. In 1998, the ICTR accepted the guilty plea of former Rwanda
prime minister Jean Kambanda to six criminal counts, including
genocide and crimes against humanity. The ICTR then sentenced him
to life imprisonment for these crimes.
The media and the judiciary must
make our civilian leaders and officials realize that they—as well
as AFP generals and PNP chiefs and directors—can be held liable
for the extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances in our
country.
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