CHR Chairperson Loretta Ann Rosales INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Commission on Human Rights (CHR) Chairperson Loretta Rosales has scored the chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Human Rights Office (AFPHRO) for saying that the 84 cases of abuse filed against military personnel since 2010 did not have a leg to stand on.
Rosales, in a recent briefing, said she was “utterly dismayed” by the AFP’s statement that essentially dismissed the 84 cases filed in the CHR against AFP personnel.
AFPHRO chief Colonel Domingo Tataan had said that the findings of its Board of Inquiry showed that the cases of human rights violations implicating military personnel were just accusations and there was no sufficient evidence against the soldiers.
“I find that unrealistic,” Rosales said. “How can the Board of Inquiry in two to three days or even a week validate and actually come up with a conclusion against 84 complaints from 15 regional offices and five more sub-offices of the CHR and say these are nothing?”
According to her, the AFPHRO’s claim was “an insult to the integrity of the work being done by the CHR.”
Rosales said the task of validating and verifying the legitimacy of the complaints takes time and entails a lot of work. So dismissing them just like that was unfair.
“It takes more than just the wink of an eye to come up with the legitimacy of these complaints,” she said.
She made the statements in a recent briefing before she left for Geneva to attend the United Nations Human Rights Council’s second periodic review of the Philippines’ human rights record.
Carlos Conde of the New York-based Human Rights Watch said Tutaan’s claim was “misleading and obviously an outright lie,” as well as “self-serving.”
“The AFPHRO is not the final arbiter of human rights cases,” Conde said.
He said that if the AFP wanted to help improve the country’s human rights situation, it must cooperate with civilian authorities investigating extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and incidents of torture.