CHR to media: ‘Be partner in monitoring rights situation’
By Maila Ager
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 16:15:00 01/18/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) has asked media to be its partner in monitoring human rights cases, particularly what government is doing to address the problem of abuses.
At a roundtable discussion on media reporting on human rights in Quezon City on Friday, CHR chair Purification Quisumbing encouraged the media to come out with a “regular monthly report” of human rights cases, saying this is the only way to make the public aware of the issue.
The forum was sponsored by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), the Center for Community Journalism and Development (CCJD) and MindaNews, for the launching of the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project.
Her proposal was part of the recommendations of UN special rapporteur Philip Alston in his report on extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, particularly of political activists, which he attributed to a counterinsurgency strategy that targeted officers and members of legal organizations tagged by the government as communist rebel “fronts.”
“One of the recommendations that he [Alston made], which I would like to endorse to you, is that there should be a regular monthly report of the cases, a monthly report of the development of the cases, because that’s how it ought to be brought to the public,” Quisumbing said.
She said her office has been flooded with human rights cases but admitted the CHR cannot do enough unless it has a partner that would help follow up these cases.
“At some point, we have to intersect. We have to have synergy,” she told media practitioners, human rights advocates, and other guests, among them Representatives Satur Ocampo of Bayan Muna (People First) and Crispin Beltran of Anakpawis (Toiling Masses).
Quisumbing noted that media usually stop pursuing human rights stories after these make the headlines. She cited the arrest and torture of five supporters of ousted president Joseph Estrada, the ambush and apparent summary execution of three suspected car thieves in Pasig City, and the deaths of several Abu Sayyaf members when police stormed a detention center in Bicutan.
After the CHR released its recommendations on these cases, the media did not do any follow-up stories, she said.
“There has to be a way to keep the cases alive, not only during the investigating [stage] but even [as the cases go] through the justice system,” Quisumbing stressed.
The NUJP’s Inday Espina-Varona said the basic problem of human rights reporting in the country is journalists’ lack of training and financial resources.
Varona said journalists are “very, very weak in putting in context,” for example explaining why victims are killed or abducted.
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