US reporter raises rights violations under Aquino

MANILA, Philippines—US President Barack Obama on Monday did not raise the subject of human rights violations with President Aquino, but a foreign correspondent did.

Obama and Aquino fielded questions mostly about China and the new defense deal in their joint conference, but Aquino seemed caught off-guard by the question on how he was addressing the killings of journalists.

Aquino explained that the government established an interagency committee to look into extralegal killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other grave abuses of human rights.

He said the committee investigated 62 suspected cases of killings, and determined that only 10 of these constituted extrajudicial killings, and of the 10, only one happened during his watch.

“As far as journalists are concerned, perhaps the track record speaks for itself. The Maguindanao massacre involved something like 32 journalists. There are presently something like over a hundred people who have been indicted for this crime and are undergoing trial,” he told Fox News White House correspondent Ed Henry.

“But that doesn’t mean we have stopped to look for others potentially involved in this particular killing,” he added.

Fifty-eight people, including a group of journalists, were riding in a convoy of cars to Shariff Aguak, capital of Maguindanao province, when they were waylaid allegedly by men of the Ampatuan clan, including policemen and soldiers, in Ampatuan town.

Then Buluan Vice Mayor Esmael Mangudadatu sent his wife and female family members to file his certificate of candidacy for governor against a member of the Ampatuan clan in the following year’s elections. Journalists joined them to cover the unprecedented move.

They were shot and buried in a hilltop overlooking the highway excavated by a backhoe.

Aquino said silencing critics wasn’t a policy of the administration, and proof of this, was the freedom enjoyed by journalists in the country.

“All you have to do is to turn on the TV, the radio, or look at any newspaper to find an abundance of criticisms. Having said that, investigations have been done,” he said.

If there were times the outcome of investigation was not disclosed, it was out of sensitivity to the personal relationships of the journalists who were killed for other reasons other than doing their job, the President said.

Even so, the perpetrators of the killings had to be found, prosecuted and sent to jail, he said.

On Sunday, John Sifton of the Human Rights Watch urged Obama to raise concerns about rights issues during his meeting with Aquino, and to use future US military cooperation as an incentive for the government to investigate and prosecute abuses.

Sifton said the Philippines remained a “risky place to be an outspoken activist or muckraking journalist.”

According to Human Rights Watch, 12 journalists were killed in 2013, raising the number of media people slain to 26 since Aquino took office in 2010. Police arrested the suspects in only six of these cases.

Aquino conceded that he had yet to fully deliver on his campaign promise to carry out judicial reform.

“The fourth plank of my promise when I ran for election was judicial reform and this is still a work in progress wherein we want to protect all of the rights of every individual but also ensure that the speedy portion of the promise also happens,” he said.

“Unfortunately, speed is not a hallmark of our current judicial system and there are various steps—laws, amendments of particular laws—even a rethink of the whole process to … ensure this speedy disposition of justice,” he added.