Head of rights body backs settlement with buyer of Monet painting

Commission on Human Rights chairperson Loretta Ann P. Rosales. FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Commission on Human Rights chairperson Etta Rosales said she was in “full support” of the $10-million settlement between Marcos human rights victims and the buyer of a Monet painting believed to be part of the ill-gotten Marcos art collection.

She said she considered it a positive development that 7,000 victims of human rights abuses during the Marcos regime stood to get another $1,000 in compensation from the settlement with the unidentified buyer of the painting.

Told about the position of the Presidential Commission on Good Government that the settlement should not diminish the government’s claims on the painting, Rosales appealed to the agency “to stop behaving as the past PCGG has been behaving.”

She said the PCGG had always appeared to act “in confrontation with the claimants, which in effect leads to a non-recognition of the judgment in Hawaii.” In 1995, the US District Court of Hawaii ordered a $2-billion award in favor of  9,539 victims of human rights abuses during the martial law years.

Rosales said the PCGG should stop taking a “parochial view” and to “see the larger context of what human rights is all about.”