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Ciudad Christia Resort, San Mateo, Rizal
15 August 2009
by
Good morning to all of you.
First of all, let me thank Karapatan Secretary General Marie Hilao-Enriquez, for the invitation to address the membership of Karapatan today. Through the tireless efforts of the organization in furthering human rights of all people in our country, the Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights truly is a significant institution in Philippine society and an invaluable partner in the cause of human rights. You are human rights defenders in the truest sense, so much so that dozens of your colleagues have dedicated their lives, even at the cost of it, in pursuit of this aspiration. They sought to protect the rights of members of their communities and this country, and for doing so they paid the ultimate price and made the ultimate sacrifice.
I am here today, representing the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), in order to honor their lives and their work, and the work that you continue to carry out in order to further the cause that they believed in, that they struggled for, and that they died for.
The work of Karapatan is especially important in light of the dismal human rights situation prevailing in the country today. It has been stated by some that the Philippines does not in fact have a human rights problem. It has been claimed that we have laws and rules, programs and policies, assurances and statements, all resulting in an environment where human rights are adequately respected and protected.
To that we respond in the same way that other individuals and institutions have responded, both at the local and international level, across a diverse range of sectors and backgrounds. The promotion and protection of human rights may look spectacular on paper, but that is nowhere near enough.
We call on the government to respect human rights, not just on paper but in reality. We call on the government not just to give the appearance of human rights protection, but to provide it in truth and in fact. We call on the government to not merely talk about human rights, but to actually do what they say and thereby carry out their international legal obligations under a number of multilateral treaties.
It has been claimed that there is no human rights problem in our society, and perhaps people think that if they repeat this statement often enough, over and over in the press and public gatherings, then the people will be convinced of its truth.
They are wrong however. We can see through the subterfuge, and the Filipino people are more intelligent and more aware of what is going on, than they think. The people know that torture is being carried out. The people know that individuals are being abducted and spirited away to places unknown with frightening regularity. The people know that sometimes shootouts are actually rubouts, and sometimes gang-related deaths are actually summary executions. The people know those individuals who speak their mind, who decry abuses, who stand up for the oppressed and who defend the human rights of others, are subjected to silencing, through threats and harassment, through frivolous lawsuits and baseless legal action, and through abduction, torture and extrajudicial killing.
Only recently we witnessed how the people can be moved to act, out of sadness and out of gratitude, out of a sense of loss and of appreciation. People were moved by the death of President Cory Aquino for different reasons. I believe that one of those reasons was her role in the movement which toppled an autocracy, under which the violation of human rights was commonplace and abuses by the government security forces prevailed. Those were dark days under the Marcos regime, and those of us who lived through that period and were exposed to its arrogance and its vulgarity, its stranglehold on power and its repression of fundamental freedoms, will not easily forget it.
Once that regime was toppled and work was carried out to breathe life back into the institutions of a democratic society, it was vowed that such grasping corruption, such lack of respect for the inherent dignity of individuals and such arrogation of power, would never again be allowed to dominate Philippine society. In this new millennium, it has become clear that much of what was sought to be prevented in the aftermath of the EDSA Revolution, has returned.
We have seen the rise of death squads in our cities, from Luzon to Visayas and Mindanao. Morally bankrupt LGUs are looking to summary execution as a way to maintain what they call peace and order. Individuals with no training are being provided with weapons, are being taught to kill, and are being set loose on our people. Local officials are either complicit in this or are condoning it. And the phenomenon is spreading from city to neighboring city, as the myopic leadership in other places looks for a quick fix and easy solutions, willing to trample the human rights of people for the sake of political expediency and in order to score points for the next election.
Proper law enforcement is hard. Proper policing is complicated and difficult. But we did not elect our leaders in order for them to do what is easy, but to do what is right. We elected them in order to bring honor and integrity to our government, not corrupt and denigrate and abase our democratic institutions. This smacks of sloth and laziness, an unwillingness to face complex problems with equally complex solutions, and more importantly a frightening disregard for the value of human life.
This phenomenon makes all of us unsafe, and we must continue to bring this message and information to the population at large. When we reach the point where petty criminals are regularly subjected to summary execution, people had better pray that they or their loved ones are never suspected or falsely accused of a crime. When we reach the point where it is considered more convenient to merely liquidate drug pushers and drug users, people had better hope that none of the friends of their children are into drugs. When we reach the point where street children and homeless persons are regularly murdered for the mere fact that they are impoverished and considered an eyesore, then the value of life will have become a mere joke in our society, and any person can be salvaged for any reason.
And this is only one of the many types of violations that unravel before are eyes. There is also the phenomenon of human rights advocates being disappeared, sometimes for good, sometimes only to be later found as a corpse, other times able to later resurface but with harrowing stories of mental and physical torture, threats and isolation, and the sense that death is only one capricious decision away.
Individuals and institutions, both at the national and international level, have spoken of the dangers of the current counterinsurgency program, where civilians are identified as targets, and where civil society organizations with diverse constituencies and a wide range of advocacies are labeled as fronts for armed groups. The use of Orders of Battle to target these individuals and groups has been condemned. This attempt to lump together civilians with combatants is a violation of a fundamental principle of international humanitarian law, as found in the Geneva Conventions.
The military cannot target civilians. It cannot carry out military operations aimed at non-combatants. This is a standard which has been in place for hundreds of years. It is as old as modern warfare and has been codified in treaties and in the domestic laws of countries from all around the world. For the Philippine military to do this is an outrage. It is shameful. It cannot be allowed and it must be condemned, as it has been.
We have seen how political leaders, members of opposition groups, media practitioners, lawyers and other individuals and institutions, from all walks of life, have all been swept up in this net. It is clear that there is an attempt to instill fear in those who would criticize the government, and those who would speak out for the oppressed and the abused, the marginalized and the ignored.
Only recently we had an American, one affiliated with one of the civil society organizations, caught in the crosshairs of government security forces. She and her companions were abducted, isolated, and subjected to mental and physical torture over several days. She was led to believe that she would not come out of that experience alive. She was subsequently released. Her American citizenship may very well have had something to do with this outcome. She has accused the government and its security apparatus of carrying out the abduction and torture. We have seen the response.
The government has claimed that the abduction was a fabrication or stage managed. The government also claims however that if at all an abduction did take place, it was not carried out by them, but by the New People's Army (NPA). So which is it? Was the abduction fabricated or was it real but carried out by a rebel group? These inconsistent answers can only lead to more questions.
Military officials have also come out stating that she is a rebel, a member of the NPA. They offer video and images as proof of their allegation.
Now, I respect their human right to freedom of opinion and expression. We are the Commission on Human Rights, an independent office, and our mandated independence means that we stand ready to listen to all sides, that of the government as well as civil society. And we stand ready to advocate for the human rights of all sides and of all people as well.
However, let me be crystal clear. Torture is absolutely prohibited and is absolutely unacceptable. The prohibition of torture is a jus cogens norm, or a norm of the highest character under international law, which all states and all governments must obey. Furthermore, international treaties to which the Philippines is a party, as well as the domestic laws of countries from all around the world, make torture illegal.
It is prohibited everywhere and every time and with respect to every person. This is so because torture is one of the most foul abasements of the human person and human dignity that there is. Subjecting a fellow human being to the mental and physical agony of torture has no place in any civilized society. It is immoral in itself, without regard to whom it is inflicted to, and it is wrong.
And yet military propagandists are implying that when a person is a member of a rebel group, or a member of the NPA, then torture is acceptable. They point to her alleged membership in an armed group as if to say that this means that she has no right to be free from torture. Such is the value of human life and the dignity of human beings in the eyes of some of our leaders. Human life is cheap. The integrity of the human mind and body are mere items to be discarded when they are inconvenient.
It is no wonder then that human rights violations are prevalent in our society today. When even government leaders appear to condone or defend acts of torture, then security officers and shadow groups may very well feel free to commit these atrocities with impunity.
This is why the work of human rights defenders like Karapatan is so important. In a society where the value of life has become cheapened, where the dignity of human beings is regularly ignored, and where frightening human rights abuses are becoming commonplace, you and your institution act as a bulwark against the spreading darkness.
Your institution is especially important because when the rights of an individual or a group of persons are violated, many of them turn to you, because you have their trust. In your suffering, they see their own. In your experiences of repression and harassment, they see their own experiences. What your institution and your members have gone through, mirrors what they themselves went through. You possess a credibility, a sincerity and accessibility which people seek out and to which they respond. More importantly, you bear such an incredible potential to disseminate the truth, even to the many who have never suffered injustices that you have suffered. Your role in Philippine society is therefore key.
The effort to protect and promote human rights in the Philippines is difficult and complex. There are many vested interests arrayed against such an effort, interests who benefit from the current level of violence and their ability to get away with wrongdoing. There are individuals in power who would like to see this effort fail, so that they may better perpetuate themselves in power. There are also institutional and systemic issues which must be overcome, and most importantly there are many hearts and minds which must be won.
We are only at the very beginning of a long road, whose end we cannot yet begin to see. And as we walk down this road, as we work to ensure respect for human rights in the Philippines, it is best if we do not walk this path alone. The Commission seeks to better coordinate and collaborate with other human rights groups as well as other like minded organizations in the country. We seek to be part of a broad alliance of individuals and institutions, with different backgrounds and different advocacies, but united in the desire to make human rights protections real in our society.
Let us, the Commission and Karapatan, further engage with one another, further coordinate our planning, and further collaborate on our human rights initiatives and programs, projects and missions. We hope that over time, a sense of trust will be developed, and the Commission seeks to do this by carrying out its mandate in an independent manner.
Now we do not expect that the Commission and non-government organizations such as Karapatan will always agree. In fact, that is not what we want. We bring different mandates, different approaches and different points of view to issues of human rights in our country. It is therefore understandable that we will at times differ, but that disagreement is good and helpful because we will learn from one another, from each other's experiences and expertise. We look forward to your comments and even criticisms of the Commission. What we ask is only that said criticisms be constructive and fair.
We at the Commission seek to build trust between our two institutions by carrying out our Constitutionally entrenched mandate with independence and impartiality. We have carried out investigations, visits to detention facilities, and public inquiries in order to shed light and compel further action on violations of human rights. Some of the specific issues we have been working on include an investigation into the phenomenon of death squads in Davao, the abduction and killing of Rebelyn Pitao, as well as allegations of abduction and torture in the case of Ms. Melissa Roxas. Except for the Rebelyn Pitao case where there has been no breakthrough so far, some progress has been made in relation to the two other cases, but as a result of this progress, individuals have begun to push back.
We have seen how black propaganda has been hurled against the Commission as an institution, and against me as an individual and as its Chairperson. In Davao, I have been accused of the unauthorized spiriting away of a detainee from his detention facility. A case has been filed against me for this, as well as another case for indirect contempt, which was filed by the person on whose property human bones were found, by the PNP special team.
In Manila, I have been accused by party list lawmakers of bias. They have pointed to my family ties as evidence of this. A military officer has branded me as “cunning and deceiving.” I have been threatened with impeachment.
This type of response is something that I know you are very familiar with. Your institution and your members have been subjected to this type of black propaganda and baseless legal action, and worse.
In the end, it appears that to take a position on the Left, the Right, at the Center, or even as an independent body which, in theory, rests at no perceptible end of the political spectrum, results in relentless accusations of self-interest.
What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, would have otherwise been the basis for any generic democracy – the freedom of any political stratum to express its own interests and opinion, to obtain redress, reform and harmony. Yet, what we have has become an abomination, a power play, where instead of balancing differing expressed interests, based on trust and in the good faith of other distinct segments of society, we have distrust. Heretofore, should we all continue down the same path in the same manner, nothing from government will seem constructive to civil society, and nothing from civil society will seem constructive to the government.
And what of everyone else found in the middle of the spectrum?
The real and continuing battle for human rights, as I have mentioned earlier, includes winning many hearts and many minds. Just as a government that speaks in disconcert, or engages in double-speak, wins no trust, civil society that appears unreasonable and wholly bent on disparaging absolutely every effort of the government, wins no trust as well, or at least the trust of a wider range in the political spectrum. The effort to bring as many segments of society together must center on a cause that is neither Left nor Right. Human rights have no political leaning, serve no particular master. We must persuade everyone from the Left, Right and all those in between, that the human rights situation in the Philippines becomes unacceptable just on one occasion of condoned torture or abduction or extralegal killing. And we all must do this, careful not to impose, though we may express, our own biases, save for our bias for human rights protection. After all, human rights have no bias.
The CHR, I must warn you, loses every ounce of its effectiveness, loses the strength of its mandate, when it is characterized as leaning either way. If not for the integrity of the Commission, allegations of bias would erode our very purpose.
It is our Constitutional mandate to oversee the far Right's compliance with human rights standards. On one hand, when we criticize the government, we do not side with the Left, but side with the Constitution and the constitionaly enshrined precepts of social justice and human rights. On the other hand, while it is not our mandate to oversee civil society's compliance on anything, should we disagree with the civil society, it does not mean we side with the Right.
It has become increasingly difficult to put up a polite face when more and more government officials allege bias. If I ever seem a firebrand, an instigator, I instigate only for the cause of the Constitution and human rights. If I do not appear stoic, it is because evasiveness, excuses and uncooperative behavior do not speak well for a government that openly declares its promotion of human rights. If I should be stoic, then it should be government officials who should be less than stoic, nay, shocked that violations of human rights are rife in spite of every declared effort to protect the same and they must exert every frenetic effort to get to the bottom of it.
Thankfully, these allegations that the CHR is leftist or biased are as old as the Commission itself and are nothing new, nothing the we had not dealt with before and are nothing but allegations. Moreover, these allegations represent a dying vestige of old guard thinking, a hallmark of a long gone dictatorship that was suspicious of human rights. Unfortunately, there remain many from the old days, who sit in government in the present day 2009, many who have reaped the changes sown after 1986, yet still think and talk in obsolete tongues, as if we are still in 1972, where hysterical attributions that Communists were responsible for everything wrong were rampant.
Our challenge, thus, is to usher in, to foster a society that thinks differently from suspicious old guards, a generation of children born to parents of the matial law years, and the children that came thereafter, who benefitted from the social transformation of our country. We need not only civil society, but an broad base of society that leaps to its feet to clamor for solutions to human rights violations. We need a broad base of society that is outraged by the disregard of human rights, regardless of the political affiliations of the victims. Finally, we need a broad base of society that is aware of the truth, and finds the truth revoting.
Our challenge today is to instill in them the values upon which we had built our society post-1986, and to bring in more from every segment of the political spectrum into the fold of these values. And among these values, one of the most precious, is our human rights.
We at the Commission will continue to pursue the protection and promotion of human rights, even as individuals and interests push back on our efforts, and attempt to derail the work that we do. As more and more resistance is put up, and as more and more offensive action is taken against the Commission and against my person, we will take these as a sign of the growing realization that the Commission is committed to carrying out its work, with independence and impartiality, with fairness and a sense of urgency.
It is our hope that you will see in the work that we do, and the harassment to which the Commission is subjected, that the human rights defenders of Karapatan are not alone, in your efforts and your struggle.
The forces lined up against us appear to be formidable, with their wealth and authority, their power and their weaponry, but it is my firm belief that these forces will fall in the face of a human rights movement, diverse in its make up, composed of people from different backgrounds and with different opinions, but united in the belief that the government must carry out its obligations under national and international human rights law.
Already the foundation on which these vested interests stand is beginning to show cracks. Informants and witnesses are surfacing. Human bones and remains are being found. Testimonies are being offered at national and international hearings. And the face saving statements and empty assurances being made regarding the Philippines can no longer conceal the fact that violations are taking place, and that instances of torture, abduction and extrajudicial killing are real.
Progress is being made and we at the Commission hope to build on this progress, allied with like minded individuals in government, the academe, the international community, and civil society, especially non-governmental organizations like yours.
In the end, we all seek a future where the inherent dignity of all persons is recognized, where the human rights of all individuals are respected, and where human rights defenders will no longer be confronted with threats and harassment, injury and death, as they carry out their mission of standing up for the oppressed and the marginalized. We all seek to pave the way to a society where all our children will live safer, where all our children will live free from fear and want, from abuse and oppression, and with the freedom to live their lives and to thrive.
The Commission deeply honors the work of Karapatan, thank you for this opportunity to address the membership, and looks forward to working further with you in our continuing quest to seek justice, call for accountability and protect our cherished human rights.
Maraming salamat po!