Human Rights Violations: AFP state of denail and impunity

Human Rights Violations: AFP state of denail and impunity

Why should we be surprised to hear the AFP deny that there are human rights violation in the Philippines. We’ve heard that before. Many times. It never changed in passage of years and changes of  Regimen, so much  so that we can set it into music and sing it. We are used to theses lies and denials. But we can never get used to the the blatant and gross violations that are committed against the people.

In the years prior to President Benigno Aquino III, 411 peace activists (including lawyers, church people and journalists) were killed reportedly by the military, for the causes they espoused. Alarmed by the staggering number, an international delegation of church leaders organised a fact-finding mission to the Philippines and urged the government to put an end to the pattern of killings. But despite the call, one among innumerable pleas from all over the world, instances of extra-judicial killings did not abate. Todate, the number of the victims has even doubled.

The administration of President Benigno Aquino III has failed to take significant measures to prosecute members of the military, police, and militias implicated in extrajudicial killings, torture, and enforced disappearances, Human Rights Watch said. The Universal Periodic Review (UPR), through which all UN member states are examined once every four years, will allow governments to review the Philippines’ human rights record and propose recommendations. This is the second time the Philippines has undergone the review.

In particular, the government’s claims of progress in some areas – such as training state security forces to respect human rights – deflect attention from the more serious problem of failing to investigate, arrest, and prosecute those responsible for abuses.

In its first UPR in 2008, governments proposed 17 recommendations to the Philippines to improve the country’s human rights record. Since 2008 however, the government has successfully prosecuted only four cases of extrajudicial killings, all under the previous administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. In 2011, Human Rights Watch documented at least 10 cases of killings and disappearances attributed to the security forces that occurred during Aquino’s first year in office. Not a single suspect has been successfully prosecuted in any of these cases.