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ICHRP calls for ICC INVESTIGATION OF Duterte’s CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY to proceed without delay

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ICHRP calls for ICC INVESTIGATION OF Duterte’s CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY to proceed without delay

November 20, 2021

‘Temporary Suspension of ICC investigation rewards Duterte and further victimizes those who gave evidence in support of ICC probe ’global coalition on human rights. 

ICHRP Chairperson Peter Murphy expressed the organization’s “extreme disappointment with the ICC decision to temporarily suspend their investigation into the Duterte government’s alleged crimes especially after the Prosecutor found credible evidence that crimes against humanity had occurred.  Any suspension or delay is an absolute betrayal of those brave individuals who came forward at great personal risk to provide evidence and testimony regarding these alleged crimes.”

The ICC has suspended its investigation after a November 10th request by the Philippine government which stated that it has begun its own review of 52 cases where police killed suspects during anti-drug operations.

“The findings of the First and Second Reports of the Independent International Commission of Investigation into Human Rights Violations in the Philippines (Investigate PH) clearly showed the flaws and failure of the domestic remedies now claimed to be operating,” said Murphy.

The Investigation demonstrated that the Philippine courts had managed to convict two police officers for the 2017 murder of 17-year-old Kian Delos Santos – one case in the 6,011 officially recorded up to the end of 2020. This case only succeeded because the Barangay Captain had failed to switch off the CCTV which recorded the police abduction of Kian.

Investigate PH also dispelled the Philippine government claims that the thousands of victims of the war on drugs were killed by police in self-defence.  It presented forensic evidence to the ICC of victims with defensive wounds, of victims who had been bound before being killed. But there are probably over 30,000 cases of these police killings in anti-drug operations, based on statistics of “Deaths Under Investigation”. And now the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency no longer reports deaths in anti-drug operations, on their Real Numbers PH webpage.

“This kind of review – of 5,655 cases – was first promised by the Secretary of Justice to the UN Human Rights Council in June 2020,” said Murphy.

In February 2021 Secretary Guevarra reported that just 328 cases had been reviewed, revealing no proper crime scene investigation in more than half the cases. In May 2021, he reported that the PNP had given access to files on 61 cases, but by June 1, 2021, the police had cut this number to 53. It seems this number has been reduced to 52. This is well below 1 per cent of deaths in police anti-drug operations. “There is no way that this level of inquiry – most unlikely to be genuine – amounts to an investigation of the crime against humanity of murder which the ICC was investigating,” said Murphy.

“The ICC needs to re-start its investigation of all the evidence it has before it and give justice to the tens of thousands of Filipinos murdered at President Duterte’s repeated incitement.

“ICHRP has full confidence in the impartiality of the ICC. We reiterate that the ICC should heed the call of these families to fully investigate the Duterte administration for these crimes against humanity so that, finally, justice may be served and impunity ended,” Murphy said.

Murphy, an Australian-based human rights advocate, led Investigate PH, a recent three-part investigation by an international commission on the extrajudicial killings, illegal arrests, abductions, and disappearances in the Philippines since 2016 when President Duterte came into power. #

For comment: Peter Murphy, Chairperson, ICHRP Global Council +61 418 312 301 chairperson@ichrp.net

PARLADE PRESIDENTIAL BID AND REDUCTION OF NTF-ELCAC BUDGET

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PARLADE PRESIDENTIAL BID AND REDUCTION OF NTF-ELCAC BUDGET

November 18, 2021

‘PH is a plaything of competing dictators’ – global coalition on human rights on Parlade’s presidential bid

The late substitution of Retired Lieutenant General Antonio Parlade Jr for the presidential nomination of Antonio Valdez “deepens the perception that the Philippines is a plaything for competing dictators,” Peter Murphy, chairperson of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) said.

Murphy, an Australian-based human rights advocate, led Investigate PH, a recent three-part investigation by an international commission on the extrajudicial killings, illegal arrests, abductions and disappearances in the Philippines since 2016 when President Duterte came into power. One of the key findings of Investigate PH was the crucial role of President Duterte’s Executive Order No. 70 which created the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict to which Parlade was the spokesperson.

“Gen. Parlade is notorious for the Bloody Sunday massacre on March 7 this year, and for the enormous damage done by his red-tagging campaign and application of ‘tokhang’ to repression of political critics,” said Murphy.

With Parlade joining the frenzy 2022 national elections, Murphy said the Philippines have three ‘strong men’ characters vying for the presidency – the late dictator’s son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, Senator Panfilo Lacson, and Gen. Parlade.

“These flagrant violators of human rights and recklessly divisive hate-speakers are not trying to develop a peaceful and prosperous society, but rather scramble for the ill-gotten spoils of office,” said Murphy.

Meanwhile, Murphy welcomes the massive budget cut on the NTF-ELCAC which now stands at P6.3 billion from a high of P16.4 billion, following calls of local and international human rights community for its abolition.

“We in ICHRP hope that the Filipino people will have a real choice of unifying, peace-making candidates for President, Senators and House Representatives who respect democratic processes and uphold all human rights, and that their votes will be counted without cheating,” said Murphy.#

For comment: Peter Murphy, Chairperson, ICHRP Global Council +61 418 312 301 chairperson@ichrp.net

ICHRP Marks 5th Anniversary of the Interment of Dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the National Hero’s Cemetery

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ICHRP Marks 5th Anniversary of the Interment of Dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the National Hero’s Cemetery

November 18, 2021

Today marks the 5th Anniversary of the re-burial of Dictator Ferdinand E Marcos remains in the National Hero’s Cemetery. The controversial reburial approved by Rodrigo Duterte is an affront to Marcos’ victims, an affront to human rights, and an affront to the Filipino people who suffered through 14 years of dictatorial rule. Marcos remains a specter on the political landscape, and his crimes and those of his family continue to reverberate through the nation decades after his 1989 death.

Marcos used the national treasury as a personal bank account, looting an estimated US$10 billion from the Filipino people in what was the crime of the century. The political careers of his wife and children are built on this stolen wealth. The Panama Papers have shown that the family continue to hold vast sums of plundered wealth in offshore accounts. The fruits of this plunder now support the presidential aspirations of Marcos’ son Bongbong. The entire family should be locked up by the Sandigbayan for their theft from the Philippines treasury.

The Marcos dictatorship sentenced the Filipino people to a life of servitude and exile through its labour export policy. Rather than develop jobs and economic growth in the Philippines, Marcos maintained the semi-feudal, semi-colonial economy and devised a strategy for the mass export and exploitation of millions of its people. Today more than 10 million Filipinos work overseas and prior to the COVID pandemic people were departing at a rate of nearly 6,000 per day for low-wage, low-skilled jobs abroad, often forced to work in slave-like conditions.

Marcos was a serial human rights violator. His regime tortured tens of thousands, there were 3,257 known extrajudicial killings, and 70,000 incarcerations of political opponents. Some 2,520 of the 3,257 murder victims were tortured and mutilated before their bodies were dumped in various places for the public to discover – a tactic meant to sow fear among the people, which came to be known as “salvaging”. This is not the record of someone who should be considered a hero, these are crimes against humanity and his regime should be condemned in perpetuity.

To maintain his reign of terror Marcos built up an extensive network of security forces, police, paramilitary and military. Under the US-Marcos dictatorship, there was a significant expansion of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, which grew from a force of 57,100 in 1971 to a 97.89 percent increase of 113,000 personnel in 1976. The Marcos regime at the same time corrupted and politicized the military giving them an ever-expanding independent role in civilian affairs which served US imperialism, making it impossible for elected officials to govern without the support of the AFP and Washington. This is evident today in the fact that in the Duterte’s de facto dictatorship nearly every strategic government department is led by an ex-military or police official, there is no longer any guise of civilian control.

In whitewashing Marcos’ crimes, Duterte is looking to his own future, hoping his extensive human rights crimes, currently under investigation by the International Criminal Court and extensively documented by Investigate PH and the UN Human Rights Council, will fade with time.

The 5th Anniversary of the Marcos reburial reminds us that designating the dictator as a national hero is an affront to democracy, an affront to the 100,000 plus victims of the regime and to the millions of Filipino people who continue to suffer under his labour export regime. Clearly Duterte, having failed to learn the lesson of this history, was doomed to repeat it.

ICHRP calls for

  • the Philippine government to continue the case against the Marcos family and to recover all the plundered wealth plus interest.
  • the Philippine government to provide full restitution of recovered wealth to the victims of the Marcos dictatorship.
  • the incarceration of convicted plunderer Imelda Marcos.
  • reburial of the Dictator Marcos in an unmarked grave.

For comment: Peter Murphy, Chairperson, ICHRP Global Council +61 418 312 301 chairperson@ichrp.net

U.S. Congress Rep. Susan Wild holds press conference calling for the passage of the Philippine Human Rights Act

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U.S. Congress Rep. Susan Wild holds press conference calling for the passage of the Philippine Human Rights Act

Washington DC – On Tuesday, October 19, in the midst of Filipino-American History Month, Representative Susan Wild (D) of the 7th District of Pennsylvania, hosted a press conference for the Philippine Human Rights Act (PHRA). Along with members of the Filipino community and supporters of the Filipino people in the United States, Rep. Wild urged the passage of the PHRA and condemned the brutal administration of the outgoing Philippine President, Rodrigo Duterte.

Yves Nibungco, national chairperson of Malaya Movement USA, started the proceedings by highlighting the more than 200 organizations and institutions that endorsed the PHRA and the numerous vigils held by the Filipino community all across the United States on October 18 to call for the passage of the PHRA.

After being introduced by Nibungco, Rep. Wild, the sponsor of the Philippine Human Rights Act, emphasized the need for a “fundamentally different relationship between the United States and the Philippines, founded on a simple proposition: U.S. taxpayer funds should not be used to supply weapons to a regime that violently targets its political opponents.” She called attention to the recent $2 Billion in weapons that was sold to the Philippines by the United States and how she objected to it because “no amount of defense contracts will ever match the value of a human life.” 

The Philippine Human Rights Act intends to “suspend the provision of security assistance to the Philippines until the Government of the Philippines has made certain reforms to the military and police forces.” Included in the PHRA’s provisions are the suspension of security assistance from the United States to the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police, two institutions that have been accused of the gravest human rights abuses.

Jim Winkler, President and General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, expressed solidarity with the Filipino people and stressed that victory in the name of democracy can only be won if we fight for democracy everywhere saying that “The success and durability of our own democracy depends not only on facing down the mob and the forces that attempt to destroy our government here, but on stopping those same forces everywhere. That is why we want to see the passage of the Philippine Human Rights Act.”

Winkler was followed by Elena Lopez, a legislative associate from the Communications Workers of America. “We, as part of the global labor movement, cannot stand idly by while Duterte kills activists one by one. We must condemn it, and do every single thing within our power to stop it… All of us, especially those of us in the labor movement, cannot fight for our own dignity and rights here without standing with our brothers and sisters abroad. An injury to one, is an injury to all,” said Lopez.

Mikaela Tajo, the Advocacy Director of George Washington University’s Philippine Cultural Society, ended the press conference by drawing attention to the Filipino youth’s long history of resistance and the need to continue that legacy.  “We see the human rights abuses currently going on in the Philippines. We’ve seen indigenous Lumad youth being denied education, we’ve seen them flee their ancestral lands because of militarization.  We’ve seen the senseless deaths of young people like Kian Delos Santos, young people like us–killed in this so-called drug war, really a war on the poor!  This is why [Philippine Cultural Society] decided to endorse the Philippine Human Rights Act.”

Currently, the Philippine Human Rights Act has been introduced in the 117th Congress with 22 co-sponsors.  There is a growing clamor for more legislators to sponsor the bill including one Republican and an introduction of the companion senate bill in light of the intensifying repression against activists and human rights defenders in the Philippines.

As it stands, the Duterte Regime has been the perpetrator of some of the worst human rights abuses in Philippine history. With the possibility of another Duterte loyalist ascending to the Philippine Presidency in the upcoming Philippine elections in 2022, the passage of the Philippine Human Rights Act is a life and death matter to many human rights defenders in the frontlines of the battle for democracy in the Philippines.

For more information on the Philippine Human Rights Act, please visit humanrightsph.org.

Press Release: UN maintains pressure on Philippine human rights, ICHRP calls for an official UN investigation

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Press Release: UN maintains pressure on Philippine human rights, ICHRP calls for an official UN investigation

October 7, 2021 – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Michelle Bachelet, presented her oral report on the Philippines to the UNHRC today, one year after the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a resolution to provide “technical cooperation and capacity-building” to the Government of the Republic of the Philippines for the protection of human rights.

Ms. Bachelet noted the progress of the UN Joint Program for technical assistance and capacity-building on human rights, adopted only on July 22 this year. She also noted the ongoing lack of accountability for the killings and rights violations in the counterinsurgency program; continuing harassment, threats and killings of human rights defenders, church workers, environmental and land rights defenders, journalists, trade unionists, farmers and lawyers. She singled out the killing of 9 indigenous Tumandok leaders on Panay on December 30, 2020, and the killing of 9 community leaders during the Bloody Sunday operation on March 7, 2021. She maintained her criticism of the government’s red-tagging against activists, media and other actors, and called for an end to the hate language during the unfolding national election campaign. 

The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) fully endorses High Commissioner Bachelet’s comment that the decision of the International Criminal Court Pre-Trial Chamber to open an investigation in the Philippines is a significant indication of the inadequate, if not non-existent, domestic remedies in the country. 

The formal response of the Philippine Delegate demonstrated that the Duterte government continues to reject any criticism of its human rights record, doubling down on its use of red-tagging to terrorise any critics by alleging without evidence that they recruit fighters for the New People’s Army.

The Duterte government continues to use the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), created at the end of 2018, as the government framework to repress civilian dissent.  Human rights violations will continue unless the NTF-ELCAC is declared unconstitutional and dissolved. According to ICHRP Chairperson Peter Murphy “the Duterte government’s claims to uphold human rights and respect the UN Human Rights Council is shamelessly hypocritical”.

High Commissioner Bachelet detailed some of the many human rights violations which have taken place since last October. INVESTIGATE PH, an independent international civil society initiative, reported extensive violations of economic, social, and cultural rights of the Filipino people, as well as violations of the rights to development, self-determination, and peace. The Duterte administration’s war on dissent is now using mechanisms and tactics which were previously used in the notorious war on poor people to target alleged drug users (such as tokhang-style killings by police) to maintain its state terror to control the people. 

High Commissioner Bachelet’s report clearly demonstrated the lack of domestic mechanisms in the Philippines to end such human rights violations. In the wake of the worsening human rights situation, ICHRP reiterates the recommendations of INVESTIGATE PH, including the authorization of an official UN investigation of human rights violations in the Philippines. ICHRP also calls on the UNHRC to maintain its efforts to hold the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and its officials accountable for the thousands of violations of human rights carried out as official state policies.

For comment: Peter Murphy, Chairperson, ICHRP Global Council +61 418 312 301 chairperson@ichrp.net 

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