MANILA – Members of the Philippine military and the police continue to practice a “culture of impunity” that has resulted in the seemingly unabated violation of the human rights of citizens, the head of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) lamented.
In turn, such culture appears to have arisen from the low regard that the security forces have for the country’s legal processes, said lawyer Leila de Lima, the CHR chairman, in her report to the 11th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.
De Lima pointed out that as a result, many human rights violators from the police and the military have remained scot-free, particularly in extra-judicial killings and unexplained disappearances of activists as well as members of militant and civil society groups, including priests and journalists.
Copies of De Lima‘s report to the UN council were e-mailed to newspaper offices and journalists based in Manila.
She also lamented that the CHR has been given mixed cooperation from the chiefs of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) despite such assurances of full cooperation in the solution of the killings and disappearances and to punish their perpetrators.
This indicated a low regard of the legal processes, which “could be another symptom of the culture of impunity within these services,” De Lima stressed, referring to the military and the police.
She cited as an example the ongoing CHR investigation of the killings perpetrated by a vigilante group, known as the Davao Death Squad operating in the city of Davao in Mindanao, allegedly with the go-signal from local officials as well as officers of the police and the military.
Many concerned citizens have furnished the CHR with vital information because they have either witnessed the killings by the death squad or have first-hand knowledge of such cases, De Lima said.
But De Lima lamented that the informants and witnesses refused to testify in the public hearings due to their lack of confidence in the country’s justice system as well as fear for their lives and safety.
Compounding the already worsening situation, De Lima noted, is a judiciary that is apparently not committed to act swiftly and penalize violators of human rights cases that have been brought to its attention.
In the CHR monitoring of these cases, De Lima disclosed extra-judicial killings have been treated as “murder” in the criminal charges filed against the suspects as she emphasized:
“This is a responsibility of the judiciary, administered by the Supreme Court. In fact, it being one of the core competencies of the judiciary to hear and decide on criminal cases, the timely, fair and independent trial and issuance of decisions on these cases could fairly be seen as the most significant role of the judiciary…”
Unfortunately, however, the judges are claiming “clogged dockets and calendars” for their failure to act swiftly and decisively on the human rights cases assigned to them, De Lima said.
She added that government prosecutors themselves prefer the delays because “they feel they lack sufficient evidence for conviction.”
At the same time, however, De Lima acknowledged that rebel forces are also to blame for the rise in human rights violations in the Philippines, particularly against civilians and other non-combatants.
Earlier, Malacanang claimed that from January to May 2009 alone, the communist New People’s Army (NPA) allegedly committed 235 cases of atrocities against civilians and communities.
The NPA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines which has been waging an insurgency war for more than 40 years, considered the longest in Asia and the Pacific.
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