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By Ira Karen Apanay, Senior Reporter
The government’s actions to resolve
human-rights violations and give succor to victims are inadequate,
the London-based human rights group Amnesty International has
reported.
Philippine-based human rights organizations have
monitored some 903 extrajudicial killings and almost 200
disappearances from January 2001, when Mrs. Gloria Arroyo became
President, to December 2007.
Citing lack of investigation and prosecution of
suspects, Dr. Aurora Parong, Amnesty International Philippine
section director, said, “Killings and enforced disappearances
continue. Activists, journalists and ordinary people continue to
live in fear, because perpetrators remain scot-free.”
The human rights watchdog stressed that human
lives are lost in the country, including in Mindanao because of
extrajudicial killings or extreme poverty.
“The wheels of justice are very slow in the
country. The officials of the Department of Justice and the
judiciary should give focus on rendering justice to victims of
extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances,” Parong said.
She added, “60 years ago, the Philippines
committed to respect, protect and fulfill human rights by adopting
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris, France. Human
rights are now enshrined in our Philippine Constitution, other laws
and supposedly in government programs. But human rights on paper are
not enough—they have to be enjoyed by real people.”
Amnesty International earlier announced the
decrease in numbers of extrajudicial killings in 2007 compared to
2005 and 2006 by 50 percent.
“But extrajudicial killings continue. Families
of people killed have not seen justice, and many are silently dying
because of poverty and hunger,” Parong said.
The recently launched Amnesty International
Annual Report on Human Rights 2008 cited the case of Siche
Bustamante Gandinao, a member of the party-list Bayan Muna and of
the Misamis Oriental Farmers Association. She was killed after
testifying before the UN special rapporteur on the 2007 murder of
her father-in-law, also a member of the farmers’ association.
“Even if cases have been filed against some
alleged perpetrators of summary executions, justice remains elusive
and the possibility of getting genuine justice remains unsure. This
is because forensic investigations of human rights violations are
not done with due diligence, either because of unwillingness to do
so, or because of incompetence to do good investigations,” Parong
said.
She added, “The counter-insurgency policy of
government needs to be reviewed and the peace processes with the
MILF [Moro Islamic Liberation Front] and the NDF [National
Democratic Front] must be pursued.”
The Amnesty International report 2008 said
“talks between the government and the separatist Moro Islamic
Liberation Front resumed after many delays, but with limited
progress due to continuing disagreements on the definition of
ancestral domain within [the] autonomous Muslim region in the south
of the country.”
Parong said the insurgency in the Philippines
has been festering for several decades, and if formal peace
negotiations fail to make substantive progress, Amnesty
International is concerned that the cases of political killings of
leftist activists linked to the counter-insurgency policy of
government will continue. – Amnesty International
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