Democracies like the Philippines, no matter how dysfunctional, are expected to go along with international initiatives to promote human rights. So the country is expected to accede to the United Nations’ Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and Cruel or Unusual Punishment.
Acceding to an optional protocol is one thing; implementing its provisions is another. After the collapse of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986, framers of the so-called Freedom Constitution made sure torture and other forms of cruel or unusual punishment would be banned under the basic law of the land. Yet in the next decades, complaints continued against the use of various forms of torture by both the military and police. Torture is employed to extract information or “confessions” that can make law enforcers announce that a crime has been solved. Some quarters suspect that American counter-terrorism forces learned the controversial “waterboarding” from Filipino law enforcers.
Torture has become one of several extrajudicial short cuts to law enforcement, which has often led to the punishment of the innocent. In counterinsurgency and counterter-rorism, many governments have seen that the employment of torture can have diminishing returns. Yet even Western governments, faced with the viciousness of the forces of al-Qaeda, have been reluctant to expressly prohibit certain acts that can be considered torture.
Simply monitoring compliance by security forces in this country can be nearly impossible. Torture is exposed only when the victim musters the courage to denounce the torturer. But it is not unusual for torture victims to disappear, never to be seen again by their loves ones, or else to turn up as victims of unexplained killings. When no one lives to tell the tale, who can say whether the country is complying with its international commitments?
It is easy to accede to the optional UN protocol; abiding by its intent is far more complicated. The Arroyo administration, which has been trying to burnish its human rights record before the international community, is expected to go along with the optional protocol. Carrying out the spirit of the protocol is the big challenge.