SAN FERNANDO CITY, Philippines-- The chairman of a national federation of fishermen urged Speaker Prospero Nograles on Sunday to expel Bantay partylist Representative Jovito Palparan from Congress to clear the legislature of the impression that it was "coddling an extrajudicial killer."

Fernando Hicap of the Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya, National Forces of the Fishers’ Movement of the Philippines), aired the appeal to Nograles after United Nations special rapporteur Philip Alston noted in a follow-up report that the entry of Palparan in Congress "indicated the government's rejection of the principle of command responsibility and further enhanced the culture of impunity in connection with extrajudicial killings."

Palparan on Sunday said leftists should stop accusing him of crimes he did not commit.

"I was not charged with anything. The counter-insurgency campaign I led [while in the Army] did not resort to human rights violations," he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net).

He said the partylist Bantay should exercise its right to serve in Congress because it was voted by the people.

Activists have called Palparan, a former Army major general, a "berdugo" (butcher or executioner) because of the spate of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances in provinces in the Visayas and Luzon where he was assigned. He retired in September 2006, after leading the Army's 7th Infantry Division that covers the Central Luzon region and parts of Pangasinan province.

"The Alston report merely suggests that the House of Representatives under the Nograles leadership is coddling an extrajudicial killer in the person of Palparan," Hicap said in a statement.

"It also implicitly states that the [House of Representatives] under the tutelage of the Speaker is allowing [Palparan] to use the House as a staging ground for more assaults against human rights and against vocal critics of the [Arroyo administration] and the pro-Arroyo military establishment," Hicap said.

Bantay assumed a seat in the House last month after the Supreme Court increased the number of seats allotted to partylist representatives to 55.

Palparan, Bantay's top nominee, said his sector was representing former rebels, relatives of victims of communist rebels, militiamen and security guards.