Canadian churches seek probe of RP killings
04/04/2007 | 04:18 PM
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Canadian churches have initiated a petition to the House of Commons to conduct a hearing on the reported extrajudicial killings in the Philippines.

The move has been made in response to a group of Filipino church leaders’ appeal for solidarity against said crimes allegedly committed by the Philippine police and the military.

The petition, available at www.kairoscanada.org, also asks the House of Commons to investigate “into the risks of Canada becoming complicit in human rights abuses in the Philippines" …as Canada advances its economic interests, especially in mining, and as it collaborates with the Philippine government in the fight against terrorism."

A five-member delegation of Filipino church leaders and human rights advocates traveled to Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa in March to appeal for solidarity amid what they reported to be a continuing rise in political killings in the Philippines.

The delegation was also set to meet with the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, and the Permanent People’s Tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Since 2001, the delegation said, police and military under the administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo have reportedly killed more than 800 church workers, human rights activists, lawyers, journalists, labor organizers, peasant leaders and heads of political organizations.

Close encounter with death

Constancio Claver, a physician, who survived an assassination attempt, is with the Philippine delegation to tell his story.

“I have been going around telling my story, but mine is only one case," said Claver, a medical doctor serving indigenous communities in Northern Luzon, who survived an assassination attempt that killed his wife in 2006.

Claver is a leader of the political group, Bayan Muna (Country First), which the military branded as a communist front. He sustained three gunshot wounds and the serious injury in his left arm has forced him to stop his medical practice.

“I’m also now without a home. I’ve had to move around constantly and clandestinely since death threats have continued," he told a gathering in Toronto jointly organized by the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund of the Anglican Church of Canada, the United Church of Canada, the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, and Kairos, an ecumenical peace and justice coalition.

Church people as victims

Bishop Eliezer Pascua, general secretary of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, reported that since 2001, 25 church workers have been killed, 16 of whom were from his church.

Pascua said, the most prominent of those killed was Bishop Alberto Ramento, the superior bishop of the Philippine Independent Church, who also chaired Karapatan, a human rights non-governmental organization, in the province of Tarlac.

Rev. Joe Dizon, chair of Kairos-Philippines and director of the Workers’ Assistance Centre, talked about how trade unions are “under siege," following President Macapagal Arroyo’s statement in 2005 that workers who demand labour rights “are terrorizing foreign investors."

The Arroyo government denies that church leaders and workers have been the victims of political killings. - Luis Gorgonio, GMANews.TV