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Martial law human-rights victims have asked the
United Nations Committee on Human Rights to compel the Philippine
government to pay them $413.5 million, according to a press release
issued by Rod Domingo Jr. and Robert Swift.
The statement said the government
has snubbed the awarding of $1.9 billion in compensation as ruled by
a Hawaiian court in early 1995.
Robert Swift is the lead counsel
in this case.
Lawyer Rod Domingo, one of the
Filipino legal counsels of the human-rights victims, told The Manila
Times the $413.5 million represents interest earned on the $1.9
billion over a period of eight years, from May 20, 1997, when the
victims asked a Makati Regional Trial Court to collect the amount
awarded to them by a Hawaii jury, to April 15, 2005, when the
Supreme Court ruled that the filing fee for the case is only P400.
“We only used a 6-percent
interest and not compounded, over the period of eight years,”
Domingo said. “If we used a 7-percent interest compounded
annually, the amount of interest earned will exceed $2 billion.”
Domingo said the legal counsels
of the rights victims, numbering 9,539, filed the petition on the
matter before the UN rights committee last October 1. On March 19
this year, the UN committee issued a document, which stated that the
Philippine government has a duty to provide a “prompt resolution
of their case on the enforcement of the US judgment.”
It was on February 3, 1995, that
a jury of a Hawaiian District Court in the US awarded $1.9 billion
to the 9,539 victims (or their heirs) of torture, summary execution
and disappearance during the martial-law years of Ferdinand
Marcos’ rule.
Then on May 20, 1997, the victims
filed a case before a Makati Regional Trial Court, seeking to
collect the awarded damages from the Marcos assets in the
Philippines. However, the court asked the rights victims to pay a
filing fee of $8.4 million. The victims found the filing fee
exorbitant and took the matter to the Supreme Court.
The High Court ruled eight years
later on April 15, 2005, that the filing fee should only be $7.20 or
P400.
Although the High Court lowered
the filing fee, the UN rights body scored the Philippine government
for the eight-year delay in resolving the matter. “For this
reason, the committee considers the length of time taken to resolve
this issue was unreasonable,” according to the press statement
quoted the UN rights body saying.
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