 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
||||||||
Royal Traders’ Hotel, Manila , Philippines , 18 September 2008
delivered by
LEILA M. DE LIMA
Chairperson, Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines
Good morning.
In behalf of our partners, BALAY, our co-organizers, the Association for the Prevention of Torture, the Rehabilitation and Research Center for Torture Victims and the Asia Pacific Forum, our international partners and benefactors, welcome to the Workshop on the Establishment of a National Preventive Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture.
The mechanisms that the 2006 OPCAT speaks of are ominously familiar. They seem to jump right out of a document that preceded it nineteen years ago, our own 1987 Constitution. It is almost as if the framers of our Constitution had already foreseen, with their brilliant insight, an expectation that would only be finally enshrined in a document that would come nearly two decades later.
Instead of warm comfort in familiarity, that this National Preventive Mechanism already exists in some form through the Commission on Human Rights, instead of some sense of pride that the Filipino had already so thoughtfully invented the same, I am directed to the disparity between our mandate and what we have actually accomplished. It is a disturbing gap that seems to prevail in the broadest scale, across our government and society. The gap that exists is found in between law and practice, principle and habit, imperative and execution, expectation and result. The gap is apparent in the horrendous accounts of the family of the missing, or survivors of torture at the hands of state security forces, such as the case of the Manalo brothers, who lived to tell the tale of their own torture and that of the missing UP students Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan. The gap stares us in the face, reminding us that we, as the bastion of human rights protection, were never there on jail visitations intended to prevent dreadful and revolting incidents of torture.
The Commission always had visitorial powers over jails, prisons and detention facilities. However, by no means was the Commission expected to be merely reactive to human rights complaints, which occur in these facilities. As the broad and encompassing constitutional provisions suggest, to exercise this power includes being proactive and for the Commission to exercise its visitorial power not just upon complaint, not just in the hope of discovering violations, not just to interdict breaches of human rights, but to place detaining powers on guard and avert violations in the first place.
In addition, the term detention facility is such a general term that at any point wherein a person’s liberty is restrained may fall within the purview of our visitorial powers. This includes not only those convicted, or facing trial, but also those who have just been arrested or those who are facing inquest. At any stage where a person is detained, even in the backseat of a patrol car, can be a stage where we may pay detaining authorities a visit.
These things, visitation motu proprio, even without any inkling of violations committed and visitations at any point of detention are laid out in the OPCAT, and yet are already covered in the Constitution. Did we really need twenty years to find out that we could have done these things? Did we really need our accession to the OPCAT to discover that we could have always been what was envisioned to be a National Preventive Mechanism?
In my first few weeks in office, I, along with CHR teams, had the occasion to conduct two surprise jail visits, one of the Tagaytay 5 in Camp Vicente Lim in Laguna and the other at the AFP Custodial Center involving General Miranda, Colonel Querubin and other military officers charged with mutiny on account of the February 2006 stand-off at Fort Bonifacio. These events were covered in the media, and it served as a very portentous public statement that the current Commission means business. However, I will be the first to admit that unless we find a way to effectively follow up these two visits with a sustainable program of jail visitations, as the NPM or a supporting agency of the same, a program of visitation which is both frequent yet unpredictable, relentless yet surgical, then I will become exactly what detractors have already said of me: a media exaggeration, all hype, tough talker but not a tough doer. The Commission, on the other hand: a toothless tiger, as it had always been perceived to be.
To be all hype and to be toothless, there lies the gap between the expectation that comes with our Constitutional mandate or our brave wager to be designated as the National Preventive Mechanism, or a part thereof, as opposed to what we really are. There lies the gap between law and practice, principle and habit, imperative and execution, expectation and result. We must do everything we can do to dispel these characterizations of the Commission.
There are many who would disparage and doubt the Commission, would have us fail and sputter, or denigrate and downplay our mandate. On 16 September 2008 , for example, the CHR sent a composite team to the Philippine Marine Corps Headquarters, precisely to visit detained military officers Capt. Dante Langkit and Lt. Berlinda Ferrer at Fort Bonifacio , only to be refused entry. Seven (7) member of Congress, led by Rep. Erin Tanada, Chairperson of the House Committee on Human Rights, were also with the team. Despite pleas to respect the mandated visitorial powers of the CHR, the officer on hand remained defiant.
However, as difficult as it may be, I must confess to all of you, that while there are nights that I am left sleepless and troubled, contemplating this gap of what is and what should be, I wake up inspired at the thought that everyday, there is something else, something more that we can do to shut this gap.
The media certainly thinks that we can. The military and the police have taken us very seriously. People from all walks of life certainly believe that the Commission is made of sterner stuff, or even accuse the Chairperson of having some personal or political agenda, but nonetheless, a Commission which is very present and effective.
On shutting the gap between the spirit of our visitorial power and the actual conduct of the same, the chance to finally make jail visits a serious weapon in the Commission’s arsenal makes for exciting times. The effort to lobby for legislative ratification of the OPCAT, the creation of an NPM that would make our country not only OPCAT-complaint, but obedient to the spirit and essence of our Constitution, all these things should make us both nervous and eager.
These two days of workshops, discussions and lectures should culminate not just in a deeper understanding of the conditions in our jails, the substance of the OPCAT or the workings of an NPM. It must result in a thoughtfully designed plan that should serve as a disproportionately large and effective follow-up to the initial surprise jail visits. It should be unassailable, incapable of being branded as media hype. It must utilize all the resources available, including partnerships with civil society and other branches of government. It must be a plan that not only closes the gap between law against torture and its fulfillment, humanitarian principle and habit, Constitutional imperative and execution, expectation and result, but also a plan that gives absolutely no room for any detaining authority to violate the rights of detainees.