screen grab from www.alrc.net website
MANILA, Philippines — On paper, the Philippines possesses many laws and hews to several lofty international conventions to protect human rights and bring swift justice to violators.
But reality reveals its human rights protection system to be a “hollow shell” and allows for institutionalized delays because of provisions in the law that allow exceptions, as illustrated by several cases including the Maguindanao massacre trial, according to a report prepared by the Asian Legal Resource Center (ALRC).
The ALRC is a non-government organization that seeks to boost positive action on legal and human rights issues by legal bodies, and also supports legal services and other programs that promote self-help at the local level. It is a sister organization of the Asian Human Rights Commission.
The ALRC’s 188-page report, prepared by AHRC programme officer Danilo Reyes, was released in Geneva last week to coincide with the adoption of the outcome of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Period Review on the Philippines, as well as the commemoration of the 40th year of the martial law declaration.
According to the ALRC, the Philippines has strengthened its legal framework in line with constitutional provisions and international obligations, but the prosecution of human rights violations still leaves a lot to be desired.
It has found that the criminal justice system “ceases to function” when those accused of committing abuses are state forces, the rich and powerful, or their minions. It saw no effective independent oversight systems to ensure that such persons would be held accountable for abuses they committed, and as a result, human rights protection has remained out of reach. Those who complain are more likely to face reprisals than achieve justice, according to the report.
On these bases, ALRC considers the Philippines’ human rights protection system as a “hollow” one, especially in light of the experiences of complainants whose cases it has documented.
“From the outside, this system may appear to have all the elements that are required to protect human rights. The Philippines has a plethora of laws and institutions that on paper suggests a workable system,” it said in its introduction to the report.
“But in practice, even the process of making complaints when human rights violations have been perpetrated does not function effectively, and system falls at the first hurdle. The human rights protection system is therefore revealed to be a hollow shell, when put to the test,” it added.
It further said that in prosecuting cases in court, delays have become the norm because of provisions in the law that lawyers could exploit.
One of the cases that the group cited to show delays in the justice system in the country was the trial of the accused in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre, the execution-style killing of 58 people, including 32 media practitioners, who were accompanying the group that would file a certificate of candidacy for local politician Esmael Mangudadatu.
The group was allegedly waylaid by armed personnel of Mangudadatu’s rival Andal Ampatuan, Jr. They were then allegedly shot dead on the road, their bodies and flattened vehicles buried in a mass grave dug by a backhoe on standby.
A total of 196 persons have been charged, and 93 suspects have been arrested. The trial is ongoing.
Reyes, in his report, said the sheer magnitude of the massacre has been an “enormous challenge” to the Philippine justice system in terms of having a speedy trial.
The accused also have the right to file petitions and motions questioning court processes, or asking to be absolved of the charges. But the filing of some of these pleadings were a ploy to delay the case, Reyes said.
“Not all motions and petitions filed by defendants, particularly those of powerful and influential political figures, are in good faith. In this case, some defendants who invoked a remedial right filed their petitions to either exclude their names from the murder charge or dismiss the case allegedly to deliberately delay the trial,” he said, pointing out that 29 suspects have yet to be arraigned, including Ampatuan scion Zaldy.
According to Reyes, Philippine laws actually provide for speedy trial. Under the Speedy Trial Act, the entire trial period of criminal cases must not exceed 180 days from the first day. But the law allows exceptions, and these are being used to the hilt by lawyers. He said most of these exclusions “have rendered the law inoperative.”
The exclusions are delays due to trials with respect to charges against the accused; interlocutory appeals, hearings on pre-trial motions from orders of inhibitions, or proceedings related to changes of venue; the finding of existence of prejudicial questions; and the unavailability of the accused or essential witnesses.
In this light, the delays in the massacre trial would be considered justifiable under the law, Reyes said.
But he lamented that these “open-ended and broad exclusions” have actually denied the parties in the case their right to speedy trial. The lack of legal provisions to ensure that such motions would not be used to delay cases has made the court system open to manipulation, he added.
He said the Speedy Trial Act has failed to conform to international norms and standards because the exclusions have institutionalized delays in trial and removed the chance of an effective remedy.
“The domestic law rather has diluted substantive rights to be mere procedural rights,” he said.
As for the travails of complainants against human rights abuses, they encounter difficulties right at the start, at the level of bringing their grievances to the police, according to the ALRC report.
According to the report, police officers sometimes refuse to record complaints, for reasons such as lack of territorial jurisdiction, with no consequences, while victims are blamed if they fail to file complaints.
And when complainants are refused, they hardly have the chance to pursue legal remedies, and the entire justice system is cut off from them.
“The failure to record a complaint is a profound denial of basic rights, yet strangely, in the Philippines, it is not treated as anything particularly serious or tragic,” it said.
Somepolicemen take the act of receiving complaints as a matter of record-keeping, and not something that requires them to launch an investigation, according to the report.
In some cases, police are involved in the very abuses that citizens are complaining about, a situation that further stalls an investigation into the atrocities.