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Filipinas Heritage Library, Makati City
10 June 2010
delivered by
LEILA M. DE LIMA
Chairperson
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
Mabuhay!
Last May 10, Filipinos trooped to the polls in their millions, braving long lines, intense heat, intimidation and worse, in order to help usher in a new era in Philippine politics.
People sought to elect a new set of leaders, politicians who will work for a more equitable prosperity instead of their own corrupt private gain; politicians who will respect and further strengthen our democratic institutions instead of working to undermine accountability, weaken checks and balances, and circumvent legal limits; and politicians who will pay more than lip service to human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL).
Or at least that was the hope. The reality is what we will confront in the days, weeks and months ahead. For now though, there remains a feeling of euphoria and almost jubilation in many circles. It is the end of a fairly dismal era, one where members of civil society were made targets of military operations in brazen violation of IHL, one where much of the government response to credible allegations of abuse was simply to issue blanket denials, attack the credibility of whistleblowers and witnesses, and create task forces and launch investigations with suspect agendas, and an era where a convoy full of journalists, advocates and civilians could simply be abducted in broad daylight and brought to a grisly end nearby, with the perpetrators confident in the belief that they were beyond culpability or accountability.
This election and the transition to a new administration offer the government and the Filipino people the chance to turn things around, and to chart a better course. Every new beginning harbors an invaluable, renewed hope that all previously insurmountable inertia can be overcome. And all forms of human rights violations that could not be expeditiously resolved in the last administration are exactly what we hope to overcome in this new presidency.
It is no secret – we completely expect the soon-to-be-inaugurated Aquino administration to perform better in terms of human rights protection and promotion. Particularly the broad and echoing theme of rights abuses against those who are branded as enemies of the State will end, just as it had faded in the waning weeks of the current administration. And this will pave the way for redirecting our energies to a vast number of human rights issues that have been largely ignored, particularly economic, social and cultural human rights, instead of fighting fires caused by an insidious, secret campaign of political terror and civil rights impairment.
But these are all hopeful expectations. While it is important to throw our full support behind the measures of the new government, aimed at improving the status quo, we know that we cannot allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security.
Not that long ago, in 2001, a similar sense of real change was in the air, after President Arroyo took over from former President Estrada. That transition was expected to lead to reduced corruption and increased transparency and accountability, but after the crowds went home and the euphoria faded, corruption, opacity and worse prevailed.
Our recent history and especially the human rights abuses we have borne witness to, have eloquently demonstrated just how urgently we need a robust national monitoring mechanism on human rights, and especially, extrajudicial killings (EJKs) and enforced disappearances (EDs). Vigilance is the order of the day, no matter who may hold our nation’s higher offices. We have seen over the years just how pervasive and how stubbornly persistent human rights abuses have been in the Philippines , even as administrations have come and gone.
As much as the executive leadership must change, and political climates must transition from one into another, vigilance over human rights must evolve. The Commission on Human Rights looks forward to many changes in the human rights landscape.
Of special mention is the implementation of the National Monitoring Mechanism (NMM) for human rights, to which the CHR, when called upon, will devote as much of its energies as it can allocate, especially in the continuing challenge to overcome crimes of impunity, future ones and more importantly, in finding resolution to all the past crimes of extralegal killings, enforced disappearances and torture incidents.
The crimes of the last decade are not past us yet, and we have not given up on finding the missing, dead or alive, and vindicating the victims of torture. The NMM and other developments in human rights are only some of the transformations that encourage us and will continue to buoy the human rights efforts of the last few years.
We, at the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines (CHRP) wish to express our deep appreciation for the efforts undertaken and the support freely given, by our friends and partner institutions from around the world. Let me thank Detlev Mehlis, Team Leader of the EU-Philippines Justice Support Programme (EPJUST). Allow me to also express our appreciation for the presence and participation of our panel of high level human rights experts from the Irish Human Rights Commission, the German Institute for Human Rights, the Danish Institute for Human Rights and the Office of the Human Rights Defender of Poland. Finally, let me thank H.E. Alistair MacDonald, and the European Union Delegation in Manila, for this and other initiatives that the EU has seriously undertaken these past few years to help create a more positive human rights climate in the Philippines.
This public forum is a milestone in the effort to end the culture of impunity which prevails in the Philippines today, and which perpetuates abuses and human rights violations. EJKs and EDs are a stain on the conscience, not just of the Filipino people, but of humanity as a whole. We all have a stake in bringing this dark chapter to a close. We will all benefit when these breaches of human life and human dignity are consigned to the dustbin of our collective history.