Lawyer: Complaints on ‘mandatory vaccination’ in PH snubbed by CHR

MANILA, Philippines — Complaints on the alleged human rights violations and deaths due to “mandatory vaccination” during the COVID-19 pandemic’s onslaught were reportedly snubbed by the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

A resource person and a human rights lawyer raised this during the House Committee on Public Order and Safety hearing on the 297,000 “excess deaths” in the country linked to COVID-19 vaccinations in 2021.

“Thousands of reports from all over the country. Around 1,894 reported to us that they were forced to get the vaccines and otherwise wouldn’t have gotten the vaccines; 2,410 people said that they were discriminated against for being unvaccinated,”  Legal Light Workers for Life and Liberty Atty. Tanya Lat said.

“These copies were provided to the Commission on Human Rights, but to the best of our knowledge, they never acted on these complaints,” she added.

Prior to this, the lawyer presented a video compilation of interviews from television reports and noontime variety shows where several Filipinos were seen lamenting the death of their loved ones days after taking a vaccine shot.

“This video seems to encapsulate the extent of the human rights violations during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a direct violation of the Republic Act (RA) 11525, which said that vaccination was never intended to be mandatory,” Lat stressed.

However, she pointed out that in November 2021, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) issued Resolution No. 148-B.

She claimed that the resolution violates the mandate of Congress and misrepresents the vaccines “by saying that they are safe and effective when RA 11525 expressly recognizes that they have not gone to Phase 3 and Phase 4 clinical trials.”

READ: Vaccine ‘no-shows’ alarm health experts

INQUIRER.net sought CHR’s side on the matter, but it has yet to reply as of posting time.

Raised before the Supreme Court

Aside from bringing this to CHR, Lat said their complaint was dismissed by the Supreme Court “on a technicality that it had no jurisdiction” and should have been heard by a Regional Trial Court (RTC).

“However, the RTC of Iligan City, it said that it should be the Supreme Court that will decide,” she said.

“It seems that no one is willing to take responsibility for this issue,” Lat lamented.