Philippines
Philippine justice system complicit in right’s violations
By Ysh Cabana
Toronto
The Philippine judiciary seems to be key to the legal obstacle for a full review of President Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called ‘war on drugs’ and why justice for the lost lives remains to be seen. Widespread impunity for rights violations in the country continue to pose risks for social activists and peoples’ movements.
The Independent International Commission of Investigation into Human Rights Violations in the Philippines, or INVESTIGATE PH issued its second report in July 2021.
“There is now a chilling effect and the consequent restriction of civil society across broad swathes of Philippine society including national and local government officials, human rights groups, the media, as well as the academe and the education sector—including indigenous Lumad schools,” the report read.
“All these undermine the independence, credibility and stability of the justice system as a protector of due process and human rights,” it said.
Leading the charge are rights advocates, faith leaders and lawyers like Suzanne Adely, co-chair of the International Committee of the US-based National Lawyers Guild, which launched the commission of inquiry last year.
“State policies, including Executive Order 70 or the whole-of-nation approach to counterinsurgency program and the 2020 Anti-Terrorism Act have emboldened both the police and military to massacre the poor and marginalised, as well as those who are fighting for the rights of these communities, including activists and advocates of peasant and Indigenous People’s rights,” said Adely.
Given the testimonies and forensic evidence, the report reached conclusions that police authorities routinely cover up the circumstances surrounding deaths in the similar way suspects are targeted in the government’s ‘anti-drug operations’. Not surprisingly, it also found a pattern of intimidating potential witnesses, and obstructing investigations by victims’ families, civil society and even by the human rights commission.
The report said that unarmed victims were killed inside their homes, on the street, or being abducted. “Those killed in anti-drug operations are overwhelmingly poor people unable to assert their rights to due process,” the report pointed out.
Red-tagging
Investigate PH said Duterte’s creation of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTFELCAC) has provided the institutional machinery for political repression, including “red-tagging,” a tactic whereby individuals are labelled as “wanted terrorists” and as “communists” through publicly displayed banners and flyers often without substantial proof.
Glaring cases in point have been the massacre of farmers in 2018 and 2019 in the island region of Negros and the December 2020 murder of nine Tumandok people in Panay in central Philippines. Human rights violations have also escalated in the southern island of Mindanao, where the Moro communities have fought for self-determination against U.S.-backed militarization. These lands have been occupied by foreign companies for resource extraction such as large-scale mining and agribusiness.
“In Duterte administration’s ongoing war against dissent, the legal system has been utilized through repressive laws and jurisprudence, the reinvention of law and settled legal practices, and the circumvention of legal procedures, among others,” the report read.
“While the legal system should protect the rights of dissenters, it is instead weaponized as a tool of state violence to do them harm, violence their rights, and deprive them of measurable redress or effective remedies,” it added.
“Bloody Sunday”
The global panel noted that allegations of firearms and explosives are used by state forces to serve search warrants commonly resulting in arrests and sometimes killings on the narrative that suspects allegedly resisted arrest. It cited the “Bloody Sunday” raids in March 2021 that led to the killing of nine activists and arrest of six others.
According to a June 2020 report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), there have been at least 208 extrajudicial killings of human rights defenders, legal professionals, journalists, and trade unionists documented between 2015 and 2019.
By December 2020, there have been 376 cases of extrajudicial political killings and 488 cases of attempted killings according to rights groups Karapatan. 119 of these took place in the first three years of the current regime.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, state violence has further intensified with the government’s military rather than public health response.
Consequently, the Investigate PH panel called for solidarity from other countries to pressure the Philippine government in facing international reckoning.
Crimes against humanity
The release of its July report follows the recent request by the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) outgoing Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda for a “full investigation” into “crimes against humanity” under Duterte. An ICC decision to launch a probe, or even a verdict, offers a rare occurrence of accountability in the Philippines, where there is a long-standing culture of impunity and where the divisive president retains record approval ratings.
It also coincided with the ongoing session of the UN Human Rights Council, where a final report will be delivered to the 48th session beginning in September.
“Throughout this investigation, we have remained steadfast in our objective to realize justice for the victims of human rights violations in the Philippines,” said Rev. Michael Blair, who is also one of the High Commissioners.
“The report must go beyond evidence gathering and be a contribution to the process of accountability and an end to the injustice.”
The report and its executive summary can be read in full on the Investigate PH website.