Karapatan documents decline in number of extrajudicial executions in the Philippines

A number of news stories discuss Karapatan’s annual report on human rights in the Philippines. This report finds that the number of extrajudicial killings has dropped by two-thirds since last year, and credits international pressure, including the reports of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston

Karapatan’s annual report may be found here.

Maila Ager, “Int’l pressure leads to decline in killings–Karapatan: ‘Stop military aid, oust Arroyo’“, Inquirer, 3 December 2007:

There has been a huge drop in extrajudicial killings this year but a militant human rights group says this is because of international pressure and the continued clamor for justice by people.

In its yearend report presented to media Monday, Karapatan (Alliance for the Advance of People’s Rights) said there had been 68 extrajudicial killings this year compared to last year’s 209.

This year’s killings brought the total of lives lost, mostly of leftist activists, to 887 since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power in 2001, Karapatan said.

The group also reported a total of 16,307 human rights violations this year, from the killings to the forcible displacement of communities.

Laying the blame squarely on Arroyo, the group called for her resignation or her ouster through a “People Power” uprising and also urged foreign governments to suspend all military aid to the administration.

“After suffering through more than six years of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s reign, the people cannot take three more years of abuse. GMA [Arroyo’s initials] has to go,” Karapatan secretary general Marie Hilao-Enriquez said reading the report.

“If necessary, she should be driven out of Malacañang by another exercise of people power. Only then can headway be made in achieving meaningful change in the interest of the majority of the Filipino people,” she added.

Enriquez lauded efforts by the Supreme Court to put an end to the killings, citing the summit called by the tribunal and its promulgation of the writs of amparo and habeas data to compel state security forces to look missing persons instead of merely denying custody.

“Of course we commend the efforts of the Supreme Courts in addressing this problem by holding a summit and the implementation of the writ of amparo, but the decline was largely to international pressures that the government has been receiving,” Enriquez said at a press conference in Quezon City.

Among these pressures, she said, was the recently released final report of United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston that blamed the killings on the military’s counterinsurgency strategy, and a US Senate condition withholding additional military aid unless the Philippine government addresses the problem and punishes the perpetrators.

Karapatan also cited the “historic verdict” of the Permanents People’s Tribunal finding Arroyo and US President George Bush and their respective governments, guilty of gross and systematic violations of human rights, economic plunder and transgression of the Filipino people’ sovereignty.

While the group noted the government’s creation of the special police unit Task Force Usig, the civilian Melo Commission, and special courts to handle cases of extrajudicial killings, it dismissed these as “token moves.”

It pointed out that Task Force Usig had mostly blamed the New People’s Army and echoed the military’s claims of a “rebel purge” for most of the killings, a theory Alston had dismissed in his report a “cynical” attempt by security forces to divert the blame.

The Melo Commission, headed by retired Supreme Court justice Jose Melo, had failed to earn the trust of victims of human rights abuses and their families, it added.

As for the special courts, Karapatan said these have yet to convict any perpetrator.

Aside from victims of extrajudicial killings, the human rights group also recorded this year 35 victims of political killings; 26 victims of enforced or involuntary disappearance; 8 victims of abduction; 29 victims of torture; 129 victims of illegal arrest; 116 victims of illegal detention; 330 victims of threat, harassment and intimidation,; 7,542 victims of forcible evacuation or displacement, 3,600 victims of “hamletting”, among others.

Karapatan then reiterated its demand for Arroyo’s resignation for her alleged failure to put a stop on these human rights violations as it also called on foreign governments to stop all military aid to the Philippines.