Impunity for the Killings in the Philippines Must End
Brief Presentation before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development Parliament of Canada Ottawa, Canada April 15, 2008
By Rep. Satur C. Ocampo Deputy Minority Leader, House of Representatives, Philippines
On November 28, 2007, United Nations Special Rapporteur on
Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions Prof. Philip Alston
released his final report on the spate of extrajudicial killings in the
Philippines which had been occurring at an alarming rate over the past
six years.
From this representation’s view, the Alston report is a well-documented
and well-argued rebuke on the Arroyo government’s complicity, through
the institutional arrangements that have permitted the killings to
continue, and its failure to stop them.
Political persecution and the killings and disappearances in the Philippines*
By Rep. Teodoro Casiño Bayan Muna (People First) Party Philippine House of Representatives April 10, 2008
I speak to you
today as a member of Congress, a representative of my political party
that has borne the brunt of the extrajudicial killings and enforced
disappearances in my country, and a victim of my government's brazen
and systematic human rights atrocities against its critics and
perceived enemies.
I was elected
as party list representative in the Philippine House of Representatives
in May 2004 and again in 2007. My party is called Bayan Muna or People
First, a national political party that, under the Philippine party list
law, is mandated to represent the marginalized and underepresented
sectors in Philippine society – meaning the workers, peasants, urban
poor, indigenous peoples, youth, women and children and others whose
voices are hardly heard in Congress.
In the wake of Alston Final Report: Heads should roll, militarist policies scrapped
JOINT STATEMENT November 28, 2007
The
report of United Nations Human Rights Commission Special Rapporteur on
Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions Philip Alston is an
affirmation of our long standing position that the intensified
extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances in the country,
since 2001 emanates from the highest level of state policy on
counter-insurgency.
The report zeroes in on the Armed Forces of the Philippines’
Operational Plan (Oplan) Bantay Laya and the National Internal Security
Plan approved by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the blueprint for
counter-insurgency target research, casing and the resultant
extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of civilians, mostly
activists.
Arrest of journalists, curfew Bayan Muna condemns the Arroyo administration' s open attacks on the fundamental freedoms of the people with the unjust and illegal arrest of media practitioners covering the Makati standoff and the imposition of a curfew on 30 November covering Metro Manila, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Tarlac, Zambales, Bataan, Aurora Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon. All the excuses by the Defense Secretary and the Philippine National Police cannot justify the arrest of media. The arrest of more than 50 journalists is a blatant attack on press freedom and the people's right to know. This sets a dangerous precedent that aims to prevent the media from effectively doing their job of bringing the unadulterated truth to the public.
