Int’l rights group show more proof of impunity in serious rights violations in PH

The rights violations include abuse of Moro communities in Mindanao. (Image from Google Maps)

MANILA, Philippines — The Second Report of Investigate PH, which was released on Tuesday, offers more evidence of widespread impunity in the Philippines of those committing rights violations, including the killing of dissenters and the abuse of Moro communities.

The report — which is available for download on the Investigate PH website — focuses on abuses perpetrated by security forces, including the Philippine National Police (PNP).

“State policies, including Executive Order 70 or the whole-of-nation approach to counter-insurgency program and the 2020 Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) have emboldened both the police and military to massacre the poor and marginalised, as well as those who are fighting for the rights of these communities, including activists and advocates of peasant and Indigenous People’s rights,” said one of Investigate PH’s commissioners, lawyer Suzanne Adely.

“Moreover, the government’s capture of domestic redress and accountability mechanisms continue to fail victims,” she added.

According to the report, military operations, which are part of the so-called War on Terror, in Mindanao continue to perpetrate violence, further entrenching the marginalization of Moro communities.

The operations are propped by military aid from the United States.

Since 2015, the US has donated over $765 million worth of planes, ships, and other military equipment to the Philippines — most of them used in Mindanao.

These operations, according to Investigate PH, failed to distinguish between civilians and combatants, causing mass displacement of Moro communities.

The report also covered how state forces are killing off dissenters the same way it targeted suspects in the drug war of President Rodrigo Duterte.

“Police and soldiers are now executing political dissenters in a manner similar to extrajudicial killings in anti-drug operations,” the report said.

“Duterte’s NTF- ELCAC [National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict], the July 2020 ATA [Anti-Terrorism Act], and increasingly the justice system have not only facilitated these killings but are institutionalizing repression that broadly harms civil society, from alleged communists to churches to long-standing democratic institutions,” it added.

Between 2015 and 2019, there have been at least 208 extrajudicial killings of human rights defenders, legal professionals, journalists, and trade unionists, in relation to their work. This is according to a June 2020 report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

By December 2020, this number had increased to 376 cases of recorded extrajudicial political killings and 488 cases of attempted killings.

“In ‘tokhang’-style raids, police and military in Negros, Panay, and Southern Tagalog have extrajudicially killed farmer leaders, city councilors, teachers, lawyers, doctors, peasant leaders, human rights defenders, trade unionists, indigenous leaders and urban poor organizers in their own homes or going to or from their work,” the report said.

“Harmful impacts of repression are now widespread across civil society. The [Philippines’] justice system participates in suppressing dissent both by weaponizing the law to facilitate human rights abuses, and by failing to enforce legal protections,” it added.

This is the second of a series of three reports by Investigate PH.

The first report was launched in March 2021, which picked up on the OHCHR June 2020 report on the Philippine rights situation.

The final report will be released in September 2021, to coincide with the 48th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council.

RELATED STORIES

Gov’t doing nothing to preserve rights, represses activists instead – Investigate PH

Rights situation in PH ‘got worse’ in past year – Investigate PH

ICC finds ‘reasonable basis’ to believe crimes against humanity committed in Duterte’s drug war

[atm]