News Release – April 7, 2008
For Reference: Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casiño, 0920-9035683

RP violating international commitments
Bayan Muna to bring real human rights picture to United Nations body

Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casiño will exert a major effort to dispute the Philippine National Report (PNR) to the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) that “aims to exhibit the Arroyo government’s best practices in hiding the truth and evading accountability for the continuing spate of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, militarization, and political persecution of civilians.”

Casiño will join UPR Watch, a coalition of human rights activists and victims, who flew to Geneva last week in time for the April 11 session of the UNHRC’s Universal Periodic Review or UPR, a mechanism to ensure the fulfillment of each UN member State of its human rights obligations and commitments. As a result of disturbing reports coming from the human rights situation in the Philippines, the Philippines was listed as one of the first countries up for review this month.
 
“The Arroyo government cover-up starts with its claim that its PNR was crafted ‘through a consultative and participatory process involving a wide range of stakeholders.’ The Philippine human rights community has told me that no such process occurred,” Casiño said.
 
Citing a critique of the PNR made by the UPR Watch, the militant solon said that “the PNR listed down Constitutional provisions, republic acts, presidential decrees, executive orders, administrative orders, plans, programs and structures related to the promotion and protection of human rights but omitted the fact that despite these, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and other human rights atrocities have become routinary and systematic under the Arroyo government.”
 
“It is public knowledge that from 2001 to 2006, the Arroyo government has always denied its responsibility for the killings.  It was only in late 2006, when the uproar reached unprecedented international condemnation that the government started addressing the issue but in a self-serving manner. As late as last year, Professor Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, concluded that the AFP, was in a state of denial about the killings and disappearances,” Casiño said.
 
The Bayan Muna solon joined UPR Watch in reiterating the Alston report recommendations that the Philippine government has simply refused to adopt and implement, among others:
 
1.    extrajudicial executions must be eliminated from counterinsurgency operations;
2.    the principle of command responsibility be ensured as a basis for criminal liability to prosecute military officers;
3.    the military practice of publicly linking political or other civil society groups to those engaged in rebellion be stopped;
4.    all “orders of battles,” “watch lists,” and similar lists maintained by the AFP, PNP, or other elements of the national security system, be publicly identified with explanations as to their purposes, criteria for inclusion, and the number of names on each list;
5.    the Inter-Agency Legal Action Group (IALAG) be abolished and efforts be focused on investigating and prosecuting those committing extrajudicial executions and other serious crimes rather than politically persecuting the State’s perceived enemies;
6.    all directives, memoranda, and orders that impede the constitutionally mandated role of Congressional oversight in relation to the AFP and the PNP, particularly over military activities and allegations of human rights abuses be rescinded.
 
“Not one perpetrator coming from the security forces that ordered, condoned, tolerated, encouraged, induced, got linked to an extrajudicial killing or disappearance has been credibly and effectively punished. To date, there are only 4 dubious convictions out of a total of 902 extrajudicial killings, and 180 disappearances, but not one of these 4 includes any State official despite overwhelming reports and findings of their involvement in most of these cases,” Casiño quoted from the UPR Watch critique.

“The Philippine delegation cannot hide the bloody human rights record of the Arroyo government. Diplomatic technocratese will not be able to smokescreen the failure of the Philippine government to effectively and sincerely fulfill its pledges and commitments as a member of the UN Human Rights Council,” Casiño said. #