Diokno son: Duterte admin disparaging human rights
On the 30th death anniversary of the nationalist and democracy icon, Jose “Ka Pepe” Diokno, his son Jose Manuel “Chel” Diokno lamented how the Duterte administration has begun to demolish the great strides the country has made in protecting human rights by “disparaging” it, starting with the brutal war on drugs that has claimed the lives of nearly 8,000 Filipinos in less than eight months.
Ka Pepe Diokno, one of the country’s leading human rights lawyers, died on Feb. 27, a year after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship.
He was among the prominent opposition leaders, including the martyred Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., who were ordered arrested after Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on Sept. 21, 1972.
Both Diokno and Aquino were placed under solitary confinement at Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija, their families subjected to the same mental torture of not knowing whether the opposition leaders were dead or alive.
Like many other political detainees during martial law, Diokno was incarcerated without any charges filed against him.
“I thought that I would never see the law in our land die again. After EDSA, I was one of the happiest persons in the world because I thought wow, what I suffered through, what my father went through and so many people went through during martial law will never happen again,” the younger Diokno said in a lecture on the war on drugs and human rights last week.
“But I am sad to say we are now at the dawn of an era where the law is again under attack and the law is in danger of dying,” he said.
Diokno told the Inquirer in a separate interview that it was a “bit depressing” to see that the same human rights issues are regurgitating in society.
He noted that from the fall of the dictatorship until the administration of former Benigno Aquino III, the Philippines has made “many gains” in terms of human rights promotions and protection.
Diokno said the country has laws against torture, enforced disappearances, crimes against humanity and other international laws.
He noted that even the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) have human rights offices that “were quite proactive and involved” even in the training by the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), the network of human rights lawyers founded by his father and Senators Lorenzo Tañada and Joker Arroyo.
“We have actually been working with them. So we were very happy with the way that human rights was becoming very well accepted not just within the government but among the people,” Diokno said.
“However, all of that sort of went down the drain when this administration took over and began to disparage human rights, and began to blame human rights advocates as the reason for the problem and was the cause of the problem,” Diokno said.
In a speech in November last year, President Rodrigo Duterte blamed human rights defenders for the supposed increase in drug users and pushers in the country.
The President threatened to kill the human rights activists if they get in the way of his campaign against illegal drugs.
Duterte is easily piqued by criticisms against his brutal war on drugs. He defends his policy by saying drug users and pushers are criminals who have inflicted harm on others, and thus should be stopped.
Diokno said blaming the adherence to human rights principles to rampant crime “is just plain wrong.”
“If you really look more deeply at the situation, why are crime and corruption and kidnapping and all of that, why are they so rampant? It’s because we have a weak justice system because so many administrations have not given the attention that our justice system needs to function properly,” Diokno said.
Following the spate of killings last year, Diokno has begun to hold lectures on martial law, extrajudicial killings and human rights.
His talk traces the weakening of the justice system to Marcos’ issuance of Letter of Instruction No. 11, that sought to “reorganize” the judicial branch by directing the resignation of all presidential appointees, including judges and justices, as well as the transitory provisions of the 1973 Constitution.
Marcos effectively captured the judiciary as judges could be dismissed on the dictator’s whim, Diokno said. Marcos destroyed judicial independence and changed a merit-based legal system to whether a judge supported his administration or not.
Diokno also said such system created a breed of lawyers who won cases not because of their skill but because of their connections to Marcos and his cronies.
Describing Marcos as an “astute lawyer,” Diokno said the late strongman “knew he needed full control over the legal system to maintain his hold on power.”
The return of democracy in 1986 failed to dismantle the network of corruption in the judiciary, Diokno said, despite attempts to rehabilitate it.
Other pillars of the judicial system like law enforcement are also hounded by corruption.
Diokno said the brutal drug war has people taking the law into their own hands, in the guise of cleansing communities with criminals.
But he warned, this would only further erode the country’s weak legal system and create chaos, which only an authoritarian government would be able to control.
Diokno said the solution to illegal drugs as well as criminality and corruption is to ensure that people will be arrested and punished.
As his father said: “It is through honest government enforcing just laws that actual justice can be attained. I do not know of any other way.” RAM
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