Human rights situation ‘improves’ in Philippines

MANILA: The overall human rights situation in the Philippines has improved in 2012 with fewer extrajudicial killings reported, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) group said on Friday.

HRW also noted the Philippines has enacted landmark legislations designed to promote and protect human rights including a law criminalising enforced disappearances by state agents, considered the first of its kind in Asia.

But HRW pointed out much still remains to be done particularly in the prosecution of human rights violators many of whom have remained scot-free.

They include, HRW said, the military and the police as well as members of the communist New People’s Army (NPA), the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf extremists in volatile Mindanao.

“(The) government has failed to address impunity for the most serious abuses. On prosecuting rights abuses, it needs to walk the talk, not just talk the talk,” Brad Adams, the HRW Asia director, said.

However, HRW acknowledged that in 2012, the number of extrajudicial killings has “dropped sharply” to 13 as against the total of 114 such killings reported since Philippine President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino took over in June 2010.

In particular, environmental activists, it said, appeared to have bore the brunt of threats and attacks with the abuses arising from mining investments and deployment of paramilitary forces in these mines.

HRW also acknowledged that the Philippine Senate and House of Representatives have succeeded in crafting laws aimed at further promoting and protecting human rights.

Aside from the law criminalising enforced disappearances, Congress also passed landmark legislations like the bill granting compensation to more than 10,000 human rights victims during the 20-year strongman rule of the late president Ferdinand Marcos, according to HRW.

It noted the bill which has been ratified by the House and the Senate has been transmitted to Malacanang Palace for signing into law by Aquino whose father and namesake the late martial law opposition senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino was assassinated upon his arrival at the then Manila International Airport in 1982.

But HRW also took issue with Filipino lawmakers for approving the controversial cybercrime law whose legality has been questioned before the Supreme Court by media, academicians and other groups concerned.

(2013-02-02/gulftoday)