UN special rapporteurs on human rights want to visit Phl

Manila, Philippines -  The United Nations Special Rapporteurs on human rights defenders and extrajudicial killings have called on the Philippine government to respond “positively” to their request to visit the country in order to assist the government in improving the volatile situation of rights advocates.

Margaret Sekaggya and Christof Heyns, special rapporteurs on human rights defenders and extrajudicial killings, urged the government to immediately adopt measures to protect rights defenders in the Philippines and investigate the increasing number of threats and killings targeting them over the past months.

“A number of cases have been reported to our mandates involving death threats and, in the worst of cases, killings of human rights defenders since the murder of Fr. Fausto Tentorio in Mindanao last year,” the two UN independent experts said.

Tentorio was an Italian missionary who was killed on Oct. 17, 2011, reportedly for his efforts to help indigenous people assert their rights to ancestral lands.

In particular, the experts expressed dismay about the case of Francisco Canayong, who was stabbed to death in Salcedo, Eastern Visayas, on May 1. The authorities had been alerted of death threats against him and other human rights defenders a few weeks before the killing.

“Many of the cases involve individuals and organizations working to defend the right to a healthy environment,” Sekaggya said. “Disputes over land rights and campaigns against mining and dam projects infringing on the rights of local communities tend to be sensitive, and those defending such rights are often met with violence.”

She emphasized that the government has the duty to protect and ensure that other actors respect the rights of human rights defenders, in spite of the “considerable economic interests present in this context.”

Heyns stressed that many of the death threats and killings taking place, mostly in the areas of Mindanao and in Eastern Visayas, appear to be perpetrated by non-state actors such as paramilitary groups, death squads and corporate security guards.

“The Philippines is required to protect its population against such groups, and its government has a positive obligation to take effective measures to protect the right to life. Failure to do so is a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” Heyns said.

“We call upon the government to urgently enact appropriate measures to this end,” he said.

Independent experts, or special rapporteurs, are appointed by the Geneva-based Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not United Nations staff, nor are they paid for their work.

The Dutch government had also urged the Philippines to hold the killers of Dutch missionary Willem Geertman accountable for the heinous crime.

Dutch Ambassador Robert Brinks said that the Netherlands embassy in Manila in partnership with local human rights organizations has supported dialogues with the Philippines Commission on Human Rights, law enforcement, and rights defenders.

“It is our hope that these projects will also contribute to addressing impunity,” Brinks said.

The ambassador noted Geertman’s years of involvement with local development and humanitarian organizations and expressed his sincere hope that authorities will hold those behind the killing accountable.

The Hong Kong Campaign for the Advancement of Human Rights and Peace in the Philippines expressed grave concern over the recent killing of Geertman in Pampanga and called for an immediate investigation.

Geertman was shot last July 3 after reportedly withdrawing from a bank in Angeles City.

Geertman, also an executive of Alay Bayan, a non-government organization based in Angeles City, was shot in the back at close range by two armed suspects.

The group said witnesses saw the killing as an execution, which led many to say that this could be another case of extrajudicial killing in light of Geertman’s record as a social worker who had coordinated closely with rural folk and farmers in Pampanga.

They said Geertman’s killing follows the same pattern as that of other social activists, church people, students, lawyers and journalists slain since 2004 apparently because they sought to uphold the human rights of the Philippines’ impoverished people.

The United States’ assistance to the Philippine military that the US Congress continues to withhold until the government meets certain conditions related to solving and prosecuting cases of extrajudicial killings already amounts to $13 million for the past five years.

Various countries have cited the Philippine government’s dismal record in prosecuting cases of extrajudicial killings, torture and enforced disappearances when the country’s human rights situation was subjected to the second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) last May at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said several countries acknowledged efforts by the Philippine government to improve human rights, including the ratification of treaties, the campaign against human trafficking, and training of security forces but several countries also called on the government to double its efforts to arrest alleged perpetrators such as retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan, who faces an arrest warrant in connection with the kidnapping of two activists in 2006.

The Aquino administration, Human Rights Watch said, should heed the recommendations by several countries at the UPR session, among them to end impunity for extrajudicial killings and other serious abuses, and to dismantle paramilitaries and private militias, including revoking Executive Order 546 that allows the formation of these groups.

The Philippines underwent the first cycle of the UPR in 2008.

The UPR is a mechanism by which the human rights record of member countries of the United Nations is reviewed by member states with the view to further promote and protect the overall enjoyment of people’s human rights.