Several dozens residents and supporters were injured and illegally detained by police and their demolition teams during forced eviction in Corazon de Jesus community. Photo by Francis Malasig via Facebook | http://pilibustero.wordpress.com/tag/demolition/.
Today the residents of Corazon de Jesus, a community in San Juan City, Metro Manila, filed an Individual Complaint before the Human Rights Committee. The Complaint seeks accountability and remedies from the government of the Philippines for the brutal forced eviction of the community that took place last year. The Complaint also seeks a permanent halt to any further evictions.
As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Philippines is legally obligated to not violate the terms of this human rights treaty, which include a prohibition on forced evictions.
Asia Pacific Conference for Human Rights Advocacy in the Philippines
University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines (25 November 2012)
We, human rights advocates, from different countries of Asia Pacific regions collectively reflected, heard and analyzed the current human right situation and testimonies of relatives and victims of extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances and other forms of human rights violation in the Philippines.
We declare that President Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III is no different from his predecessor Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo with continuing human rights violations and the prevalent impunity in the country. For the past two years the Aquino government’s ‘righteous path’ already bore a total of 114 victims of extra-judicial killings, 12 cases of enforced disappearances, 447 cases of illegal arrest among others, as documented by Karapatan (from July 2010 to September 30, 2012).
We condemn the intensifying militarization in the country through Oplan Bayanihan. The massive military operations in the countryside have cost the lives and livelihood of people in the community. It has been used to protect the interest of foreign mining companies and other big businesses operating in the areas, politically harass and thwart the people’s struggle against large scale mining and environmental destruction and to frustrate the people’s aspiration towards the protection of ancestral lands and sources of livelihood especially among indigenous peoples.
We continually oppose the counter insurgency program Oplan Bayanihan of the Aquino government. Based on the experiences of people in the community, Oplan Bayanihan is no different from the previous anti-insurgency campaigns made by the past governments and as it further intensifies state fascism and perpetuates extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearance, arbitrary arrest and detention, forcible displacement of people in the communities and other forms of human right violations.
We condemn Oplan Bayanihan and the intensifying state fascism in the Philippine is vastly linked to the US anti-terror campaign in Asia. The increasing US intervention in the Philippines through Visiting Forces Agreements and Balikatan exercises is primarily designed to strengthen the counter insurgency campaign of the present Aquino government and US economic and political interests in the country and in Asia and Pacific region and to weaken the Filipino peoples’ movement for human rights, justice and peace in the country. As it is, Oplan Bayanihan is the US Counter-insurgency Guide to the letter, a copycat of the insidious plan meant to uphold the interests of the 1% over that of the 99% of the poor Filipinos.
We lament that the justice for the victims of human rights violations remains elusive as hardly any of the perpetrators of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearance, torture and other gross attacks on political dissenters have been made to answer for their crimes. The most notorious among them former General Jovito Palparan remains at large while police and military officials are not taking any serious effort to arrest him. Worse, the practice of promoting military generals whose records reek of human rights abuses continue, as in the case of Morong 43 torturers.
We persistently call on President Benigno Aquino III to speed up the trial of GMA and hold her accountable to her crimes against the Filipino people. We call on the president to immediately stop the extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, enforced disappearances, forced evacuation of rural villages and other human rights violations that continue as brazenly under his government. We call for compensation and indemnification of victims of human rights violations and their families. We call for the general and unconditional omnibus amnesty for all political prisoners. We likewise call on the President to immediately pull out military and paramilitary troops in rural and urban communities. The increasing numbers of human rights violations are not a mere propaganda of the left as Aquino maliciously declared before the international community, rather it manifest the continuing crimes against activists, human rights and peace advocates, indigenous peoples, workers, farmers and church peoples perpetuated by the military, police and state agents operating under his watch.
We will stand resolutely with all peoples experiencing human rights violations and their kin in the persevering struggle for justice. We will act unceasingly, and with full determination, bring an end to state of impunity prevailing in the Philippine society as we work towards the full realization of basic rights and fundamental freedoms in the Philippines.
Thus, amidst the worsening human rights violations and prevailing state of impunity in the Philippines we human rights and peace advocates from Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines are committing ourselves to stand in solidarity with the Filipino people and victims of human rights violations.
We hereby form the Asia Pacific Coordinating Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines. The APCCHRP shall actively support the Filipino peoples’ struggle for justice, peace and human rights. We shall strengthen our resolve and solidarity to bring the issues of human rights violations in the Philippines to regional and international communities.
Signed:
Action for Peace & Development in the Philippines (APDP, Australia)
Auckland Philippines Solidarity Association (APSA, New Zealand)
Hong Kong Campaign for the Advancement of Human Rights and Peace in the Philippines (HKCAHRPP, Hong Kong)
Karapatan (Philippines)
Migrante-Japan (Japan)
Osan Migrants Center (South Korea)
Taiwan Alliance for Human Rights (TAHR, Taiwan)
Delegates to the Asia Pacific Conference for Human Rights Advocacy in the Philippines successfully elected and formed the Asia Pacific Coordinating Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (APCCHRP). 25 November 2012, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City
Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas (KAMP, Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Philippines) is the largest indigenous peoples organization in the Philippines. It is in the fore in the defense of ancestral land rights and rights to self-determination of indigenous peoples.
The non-recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights to ancestral land and to self-determination and the blatant violation of their civil-political rights remains dire to this day. This is characterized by the escalation of ancestral land grabbing by large-scale mining corporations and of ‘development’ projects and businesses such as plantations and dams.
Herman Geertman, brother of Willem, and Aurora Santiago, speaking with the media before the presentation of the petition to Dutch parliamentarians.
The petition on “the call for independent investigation of and justice for the murder of Willem Geertman” was presented on 06 November 2012 to the Permanent Commission for Foreign Affairs of the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament.
The petition was received by Alexander Pechtold, of the Democtrats 66 Party(D66), and acting Chairman of the commission and member of Parliament. He was accompanied by Parliament members, Desiree Bonis of the Labor Party (PVDA), Jasper van Dijk of the Socialist Party (SP), Pieter Omtzigt of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), and Sjoerd Sjoerdsma of D66. Mr. Pechtold welcomed the delegation and expressed condolences for the death of Willem Geertman.
Rights lawyers of disappeared welcome bill with guarded optimism;
challenges President Aquino to go after violators regardless of rank or position
The Desaparecidos Bill represents a positive step forward for the victims of enforced disappearances. However, while this law is an important reform, it represents only the first step along the long and winding road to truly ending impunity. It is therefore with cautious optimism that the National Union of People’s Lawyers welcomes this law.
The NUPL handles many cases of enforced disappearances all over the country including the case of UP students Cadapan and Empeño, who were victims of enforced disappearance at the hands of retired fugitive Army Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan. It also handles the cases of Jonas Burgos, Raymond Manalo, Melissa Roxas, among others.
This law creates a greater impetus for the government to bring Palparan and others before the law and deliver some justice to the long-suffering families of the victims.
It is crucial that this law does not sit in the bottom drawer gathering dust. The last thing the families of victims of enforced disappearances need, in addition to the constant heartache and uncertainty of having lost their loved ones at the hands of the State, are false promises and empty platitudes from the Aquino administration while impunity persists under the smokescreen of a supposedly effective law.
Aquino must ensure that this law is effectively implemented according to its terms. He must ensure that State security forces cannot disregard or circumvent it. It must be unequivocally clear that this law will be enforced against those responsible regardless of stature or rank.
We , therefore, welcome in principle the proposed anti-disappearance law which has been long in coming and urge Aquino to sign it with dispatch.
As lawyers for many victims of disappearances, we fervently wish this will in reality turn out to be an effective tool to give redress, if not prevent or deter State transgressions which bring incomparable and endless worry, anxiety and grief.
We pray that beyond the elegant and formal legal language, no false hope is added to injury by State security forces who will circumvent and even mock it on the ground like other rights laws; by a judiciary perceived by the families to be at times unresponsive and even detached from social realities; and by an administration which has become a party to such violations by default or inaction, if not tacit condonation, or worse, which engenders it by making it logically integral to a State policy or program that practically perpetuates impunity.
Beyond beautiful and well-crafted laws on human rights is the decisive political will to render justice though the heavens fall.#
Reference:
Atty. Edre U. Olalia, NUPL Secretary General
+639175113373
National Secretariat
National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL)
3F Erythrina Bldg., Maaralin corner Matatag Sts. Central District,Quezon City, Philippines
Telefax no.920-6660
Email addresses: nupl2007@gmail.com and nuplphilippines@yahoo.com
Visit the NUPL website at http://www.nupl.net/
“By calling yourselves the ‘people’s lawyer,’ you have made a remarkable choice. You decided not to remain in the sidelines. Where human rights are assaulted, you have chosen to sacrifice the comfort of the fence for the dangers of the battlefield. But only those who choose to fight on the battlefield live beyond irrelevance.”
– Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno, in his message at the NUPL Founding Congress, September 15, 2007
“After long years of experience as a people’s lawyer, I can honestly say it has been a treasured journey of self-fulfillment and rewarding achievement. I know it will be the same for all others who choose to tread this path.”
– Atty. Romeo T. Capulong, NUPL founding president, in his keynote address at the Fifth Conference of Lawyers in Asia Pacific ( COLAP V), September 18, 2010
