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Noynoy Aquino, zero on human rights on two counts—Karapatan

ICHRP Secretariat
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Noynoy Aquino, zero on human rights on two counts—Karapatan

Press Release, July 24, 2012 – Karapatan said that yesterday’s 3rd State of the Nation Address (SONA) only proved how Noynoy Aquino regards, or more aptly, disregards human rights.

Cristina Palabay, spokesperson of Karapatan, said that, “the police brutality that was used against the demonstrators and Aquino’s deafening silence on the increasing number of extrajudicial killings and intensifying military operations that continue to attack the people in the countryside and the reign of impunity provided the real picture of the state of human rights in the country.”

Palabay hits the authorities’ acts to prevent the demonstrators to go near the Batasan area, saying that it was in fact the authorities who violated Section 6 B of Batas Pambansa 880 stating that the “mayor or any official acting in his behalf shall act on the application within two (2) working days from the date the application was filed, failing which, the permit shall be deemed granted.”

Palabay explained that “the reaction of some of the protesters on the attempts of the police to block their peaceful march is out of frustration and anger over the arrogance and aggressive stance of the police and Noynoy’s SONA of lies on the real situation of the Filipino people. In the first place, this would have not happened had the authorities allowed the demonstrators to go near Batasan and had they not use their vehicles as a barricade against the people’s march.”

“On the one hand, there was police violence against the street demonstrators, majority of them were urban poor dwellers, jobless workers, landless peasants and victims of military operations in the countryside. On the other hand, there was Noynoy Aquino, inside the House of Representatives who painted a dream-like picture of the Philippines—glossy and overly decorated. Aquino’s SONA was simply crass.”

Karapatan asserts that Noynoy, “expectedly, would not dare thread on the issue of human rights because he will only expose himself as today’s number one human rights violator. His Oplan Bayanihan goes full swing as he greases the military machinery with all the favours he enumerated in his SONA.” ###

Reference: Cristina “Tinay” Palabay, Spokesperson, 0917-5003879
Angge Santos, Media Liaison, 0918-9790580
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PUBLIC INFORMATION DESK
publicinfo@karapatan.org
———————————————————————
Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights
2nd Flr. Erythrina Bldg., #1 Maaralin corner Matatag Sts., Central District
Diliman, Quezon City, PHILIPPINES 1101
Telefax: (+63 2) 4354146
Web: http://www.karapatan.org

KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties.  It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign.

Lies, terror and violence in Aquino’s 3rd SONA

ICHRP Secretariat
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Lies, terror and violence in Aquino’s 3rd SONA

Press Release, July 23, 2012 – With his two years of presidency and three State of the Nation Address (SONA), Pres. Noynoy Aquino has peddled lies on the situation of human rights in the Philippines. He has been, in fact, inflicting terror and violence against the Filipino people.

The second year of the Aquino administration is being punctuated with shamelessly deceptive slogans on economic development and human rights to prop up the administration’s image especially in the international community. But it is clear that the Filipino people have seen the truth behind the cacophony of these lies. The severe landlessness and hunger, the multitudes of jobless and the growing number of homeless are more stinging realities, more visible, more audible and felt than any other PR spin from Malacanang.  Thus, the growing number of impoverished Filipinos had no recourse but to resist and struggle.

This resistance and legitimate opposition, however, are met with repression and terror by Aquino and the Armed Forces of the Philippines through the counter-insurgency program Oplan Bayanihan. The bombs, the firing of guns, the killings are the government’s militarist ways to suppress and terrorize the people who refuse to be deceived and silenced.

In the two years of the Aquino administration, from July 2010 to June 30, 2012, Karapatan has documented 99 victims of extrajudicial killings; 11 victims of enforced disappearances; threats, harassment, and intimidation and forced evacuation of whole communities; cases of torture, rape, illegal arrests and detention, most are results of military combat operations being waged especially in the rural areas.

The series of attacks and violence against organized communities and human rights defenders and the latest wave of killings of human rights and environmental activists, like Romualdo Palispis, Willem Geertman and recently farmer Romulo Vaflor indicate the heightening terror and violence being instigated by state security forces and the Aquino government. This comes alongside the serious cases of rights violations brought about by militarization of organized communities especially in the Bondoc Peninsula; the violent demolitions of urban poor communities such as in Silverio, Paranaque, where guns were trained and fired at the barricading residents; the illegal arrest based on trumped-up charges against Makabayan coordinator and lay church worker Agnes Mesina; and the indiscriminate firing at the office of Bayan Muna in Catarman, Northern Samar.

To date, Karapatan has also documented the illegal arrest and detention of 107 individuals based on trumped up criminal charges, bring the total number of political prisoners to 385. The illegal arrest of consultants of the National Democratic Front continue with the arrest of trade union leader Reynante Gamara, while consultants Tirso Alcantara and Alan Jazmines are being subjected to inhumane and repressive conditions in jail.

Meanwhile, notorious rights violators such as Maj. General Jovito Palparan and several officials of the AFP and PNP remain untouchables from the bars of justice, as they continue to be coddled by the institutions and powers-that-be whom they serve. The Ampatuans who massacred journalists, lawyers and ordinary citizens have not been convicted, while former Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo enjoys the luxury of a hospital detention.

In his SONA in 2011, he pledged to immediately pass the Marcos Victims Compensation Bill to give justice and indemnify the victims of rights abuses under the fascist Marcos dictatorship. He has yet to deliver on this promise, while many of the victims, like martial Law activists Maita Gomez, Romy Luneta and Bong Barsoles, had passed away due to illnesses.

This is the state of the nation under Aquino – where justice has not been served, impunity prevails and his terror and violence against the people resounds.#

Reference: Cristina “Tinay” Palabay, Spokesperson, 0917-5003879;
Angge Santos, Media Liaison, 0918-9790580

———————————————————————
PUBLIC INFORMATION DESK
publicinfo@karapatan.org
———————————————————————
Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights
2nd Flr. Erythrina Bldg., #1 Maaralin corner Matatag Sts., Central District
Diliman, Quezon City, PHILIPPINES 1101
Telefax: (+63 2) 4354146
Web: http://www.karapatan.org

KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties.  It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign.

Statement of support to the call of the UN experts and international human rights community on the situation of rights defenders in Mindanao

ICHRP Secretariat
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23 July 2012 –  A propos the assaults against human rights defenders working on land rights in Mindanao, we support the recent call of the United Nations Special Rapporteurs (UNSR) on human rights defenders and extra-judicial killings for the Government of the Philippines to adopt urgent measures to protect the life of rights defenders and ensure they are able to carry out their human rights work.

In Mindanao where human rights and fundamental freedoms are systematically violated, where community leaders and pro-reform organizations work amidst the climate of impunity, and are persistently threatened and violently repressed, the UN experts’ call for the authorities to carry out prompt, impartial and independent investigations into the growing number of threats and killings of rights defenders to hold perpetrators to account is urgent.

We affirm the observation of UNSR on extra-judicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, that many of the death threats and killings taking place appear to be perpetrated by paramilitary groups, as in the case of indigenous leaders and anti-plunder advocates Mampaagi Belayong of Esperanza in Agusan del Sur and Alvie Binungkasan of Gingoog City in Misamis Oriental who were both killed in the last quarter of 2009; of Arpe Belayong and Soltie San-ogan of Esperanza, Agusan del Sur on 30 June 2011; and of Jimmy Liguyon of San Fernando, Bukidnon on 5 March 2012. With this reality from the Mindanao grounds, we are again urging the Aquino government to disallow the use of paramilitary as investment defense forces.

Justice is still elusive for the friends and family of indigenous peoples’ rights advocate of fellow RMP-member Father Pops Tentorio who was killed on October last year.  The orphaned family of anti-dam leader Margarito Cabal of Kibawe, Bukidnon killed last April continues to live in insecurity and uncertainty. We commend the efforts of the New York-based Human Rights Watch that publicized the series of killings in Mindanao, and we criticize Malacanang’s denial as promotion of further impunity.

As members of the RMP living with the rural poor and joining them in their aspiration for the realization of land rights and access to common goods, we call the UNSRs to further urge the Aquino government to allow them to visit the country and for international human rights organizations to conduct further investigations in Mindanao grounds. In farming and indigenous communities with land issues, gatherings are strictly monitored.  Leaders are put under surveillance, sometimes ‘invited’ to the military camps for questioning. In farms owned by transnational companies, farmer-victims of land grabs who have been reduced to mere agricultural workers have been prohibited to form or to join unions, and the right to expression and to peaceful assembly, and the right to protest have been curtailed.

Furthermore, we make the statement that these civil and political rights curtailment are only consequences of the rural communities’ assertion for their economic, social and cultural rights.  They have fought hard against the government’s anti-poor policies favoring rich companies over the basic rights of its constituencies to work, eat and live.  And in reaction to their resistance, they are met with state and state-supported violence.  We call on for support for the protection of both the communities’ civil and political rights and their economic, social and cultural rights for one could not exist without the other.

We commend all Mindanao organizations that have brought these human rights violation issues to the international community. These incidents have been downplayed, dismissed as insignificant by the local and national government offices.  If not for the collective efforts of the organizations, a spiral of silence in these gravely abused communities will continue.  Even at the present, the Armed Forces of the Philippines is once more trying to conceal it by redirecting the focus to their propaganda against the communist New Peoples Army.  It is their futile attempt to evade answering directly the issues thrown against them.  Additionally, even as we tire of repeating ourselves, we reiterate that our responsibility is to see to it that they, the government and its armed forces as primary duty bearers, satisfy their role to protect and respect and fulfill the rights of the people.  We are appalled by the present situation where they, the duty bearers, the supposed protectors of human rights, are the ones violating it.

Our island is not alien to violence.  For centuries, it had been the land of solid resistance against the colonial aggressors – earning the reputation of being the land of barbarians and juramentados.  But for us who have been working in these communities who have only been asserting their right to live, it is the land of the brave.  Unfortunately and lamentably, the present administration only continued the vicious scheme of the previous administration.  It continues to support the use of brute and violence to force its so-called development projects on the peoples only hoping to live decently.

In President Aquino III’s coming third State of the Nation Address, we are sure the dire human rights situation in our island will be covered again by declarations of economic growth and progress.  For us, these are only statistics that mean nothing to a poor population that is growing hungrier by the minute.  Economic growth is meaningless to a family grieving for the loss of a father, a child, a brother or a sister.  We continue to maintain our call for justice – justice for the blood-drenched Mindanao, justice for the indigenous peoples who have for decades been considered illegal settlers in their own lands, justice for the farmers who could not afford the fruits of their hands.

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RURAL MISSIONARIES OF THE PHILIPPINES-Northern Mindanao Sub-Region (RMP-NMR)
Room 01, Kalinaw Lanao Center for Interfaith Resources
0016 Bougainvilla Puti, Villaverde
9200 Iligan City, Philippines
T/F: +63 (63) 223 5179  E: rmpnmr@gmail.com  W: www.rmp-nmr.org

“our love is not to be just words or mere talk but something real and active” –1 John 3:18

Statement on the Current Human Rights Situation in the Philippines

ICHRP Secretariat
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Kowloon Union Church, 22 July 2012 –  ”Like the Son of Man, who did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life to redeem many people” (Matthew 20:28)

This quotation from the Bible reminds us that there people who speak the truth and walk the path of serving the needy and the oppressed. However, there are also those, especially the ones in power, who do them violence and even bring them death just so they can be stopped from their selfless service.

Willem Geertman, a Dutch missionary and development worker based in the Philippines who was gunned down in broad day light and the 95 other reported victims of extra judicial killings of activists, church workers and human rights defenders since Benigno Aquino III became president in June 2010,are some of the people that the Bible’s passage above refers to.

The Sunday scripture reading “On the death of John the Baptist” (Mark 6: 14–29) more than ever reminds us of the sufferings and brutal murder of John the Baptist at the hands of King Herod. In the present time, the extra judicial killings in the Philippines and the continued culture of impunity in the country remind us that those who reign in power – the modern-day Herods – will do even the worst and most vile of deeds to preserve the status quo and the benefits they and their benefactors get from it. Thus, they destroy everyone who goes against them.

Guided by the scriptures and the call for Christians to speak of the truth, the Kowloon Union Church raises grave concern on the human rights situation in the Philippines and demands justice for the victims.

It is even more disappointing that the number of killings of human rights defenders in the Philippines continue to grow despite the widespread call for justice, peace and respect for human rights inside and outside the Philippines.

Last May 29, the Philippines was again subjected to a second cycle of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The Secretary General of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), Rev. Fr. Rex Reyes visited Hong Kong recently and shared the human rights situation in the Philippines and what transpired during the UPR in a public forum by the Hong Kong Campaign for the Advancement of Human Rights and Peace in the Philippines (HKCAHRPP) co-organized with the Kowloon Union Church and other HK groups. In his sharing, Fr. Rex mentioned that many powerful governments, some of whom were the United States of America, Germany, Australia and even The Holy See, called the attention of the Philippine government to immediately stop extrajudicial killings and end human rights violations in the Philippines.

The issue of human rights in the Philippines is deeply rooted in its system and KUC is a witness to the thousands of Filipino women who are forced to leave their own families and work in Hong Kong and elsewhere in order to survive. Forced migration is itself a violation of fundamental rights of the people and the system that breeds forced migration is what those who have been fallen, like Willem Geertman, strive to change.

As Christians, we speak the truth and despite the challenges, we in KUC will continue to be one with all people calling to stop the killings of human rights defenders in the Philippines and for justice to be finally achieved by all the victims of human rights violations.#

Protestant bishops echo political detainees call for freedom

ICHRP Secretariat
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Protestant bishops echo political detainees call for freedom

News Release, July 21, 2012 – Eight Bishops from the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) expressed support to the ongoing hunger strike/fasting of political prisoners. In a statement, the Bishops urged Pres. Noynoy Aquino “to consider the plight of political detainees under his administration and their call for a general, unconditional and omnibus amnesty.”

The hunger strike/fasting which started last July 16 is on its fifth day. On July 19, some 18 political prisoners in Metro Manila, Agusan del Sur, Cebu and Tagum City heightened their action by going  on hunger strike to highlight the call for their release. Five hundred (500) inmates at the Compostela Valley Provincial Rehabilitation Center joined the political prisoners in sympathy. Political prisoners in 10 jails throughout the country have joined the hunger strike/fast.

The UCCP Bishops said they are “compelled to amplify” the on-going hunger strike of political prisoners in the “face of such callous dismissal by the Aquino Administration”, referring to the earlier pronouncement of Malacañang that “there are no political prisoners” in the country.

They also called for the release the 14 National Democratic Front (NDF) peace consultants who are covered by the Government of the Philippines (GPH) and NDF Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG).   “As Church advocates committed to the peace process, we view such action as a significant step in bringing forward and revitalizing the GPH-NDFP peace talks.”

In a separate statement, NDF peace consultant Ramon Patriarca criticized the Aquino government because “it has not done enough to comply with its commitments in the many bilateral agreements it forged with the NDF.  One cannot but suspect that the June 15 Oslo initiative was meant only as another ‘pogi point’ for the president’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) or, as a mere posturing preparatory to ending altogether the GPH-NDF peace negotiations consistent with his Oplan Bayanihan counter-revolutionary program.” Patriarca is a political prisoner at the Camp Lapu-Lapu, AFP Central Command headquarters in Lahug, Cebu City. He is among the political prisoners who are on hunger strike.

The UCCP Bishops who signed the statement of support were: Bishops Reuel Norman O. Marigza, General Secretary of the UCCP, Elorde M. Sambat, North Luzon Jurisdictional Area, Roel P. Mendoza, Middle Luzon Jurisdictional Area, Arturo R. Asi, South Luzon Jurisdictional Area, Jaime M. Moriles, West Visayas Juridictional Area, Dulce Pia-Rose, East Visayas Jurisdictional Area, Melzar D. Labuntog, Northwest Mindanao Jurisdictional Area, Modesto D. Villasanta, Southeast Mindanao Jurisdictional Area. ###

Reference: Cristina “Tinay” Palabay, Spokesperson, 0917-5003879
Angge Santos, Media Liaison, 0918-9790580

———————————————————————
PUBLIC INFORMATION DESK
publicinfo@karapatan.org
———————————————————————
Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights
2nd Flr. Erythrina Bldg., #1 Maaralin corner Matatag Sts., Central District
Diliman, Quezon City, PHILIPPINES 1101
Telefax: (+63 2) 4354146
Web: http://www.karapatan.org

KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties.  It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign.

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