WORSENING STATE OF HUMAN RIGHTS. Human rights lawyer Edre Olalia speaks before the United Nations Human Right Council's (UNHRC) 7th session on March 13, backing the recommendation of Hina Jilani, special representative of the UN secretary general, to include the state of human rights defenders in the country in the upcoming Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Olalia cites the killing of human rights defenders in the country and the government's inability to solve this problem. Video taken from United Nations webcast.
MANILA, Philippines -- The continued increase in extrajudicial killings and abductions in the country, which have not spared human rights defenders, have prompted human rights lawyers to ask the United Nations for help and assistance.
Speaking before the United Nations Human Right Council’s (UNHRC) 7th session on March 13 (Friday in Manila), lawyer Edre Olalia backed the recommendation of Hina Jilani, special representative of the UN secretary general, “that the situation of human rights defenders be one of the elements to be examined in the upcoming Universal Periodic Review (UPR)” to be undertaken by the UN body.
Olalia, who is an officer of both the National Union of Peoples' Lawyers (NUPL) and the Counsels for the Defense of Liberties (CODAL), delivered the oral intervention of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) to Jilani’s special report on human rights defenders.
Jilani’s report mentioned the murder of human rights lawyer Gil Gojol, who was killed after coming from a court hearing, and of the surveillance of the Prolabor Legal Assistance Center (PLACE), which provides free legal aid to workers.
Olalia said these incidents violated the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the 1990 Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, and the 1998 UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.
Worse, he pointed out that “these cases are incompatible with the Philippines' pledges as a member” of the UNHRC.
“These attacks are emblematic of the continuing attacks not only against lawyers -- a significant number of whom are involved directly in human rights lawyering and advocacy,” Olalia said in his speech, a copy of which was furnished INQUIRER.net.
“These are also but part of the impunity of the attacks against hundreds of other human rights defenders -- human rights workers, peasant organizers, trade unionists, churchpeople and others -- within the context of a militarist counterinsurgency approach ironically called Oplan Bantay Laya [Operation Plan Freedom Watch],” he added, pointing out that “until today, no one has ever been credibly convicted for these attacks.”
The continued extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances have made many human rights defenders unable to perform their duties for “fear of intimidation and reprisal,” said Olalia. He added that even foreign rights defenders have not been spared, with several placed on government’s immigration watch list.
For the past few years, the Arroyo government has come under local and international scrutiny and criticism for extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, which UN special rapporteur Philip Alston, in a scathing report, blamed on a government counterinsurgency strategy that he said targets leaders and members of organizations openly accused of being “rebel fronts” and a military he described as “in a state of denial.”
The human rights group Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights) estimates that close to 900 people, mostly leftist activists, have been murdered, allegedly by state security forces, since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power in 2001.
Although the rate of such incidents dropped drastically last year, apparently as a result of the international pressure, cases of summary executions continue to be reported.
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