U.S. Conducts Hearing On Philippine Political Killings

The Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has scheduled a hearing on the extra-judicial killings in the Philippines on Wednesday.

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) chairs the Subcommittee.

Two Filipino human rights advocates are scheduled to testify at the hearing, which was called by Senator Boxer, to find ways to end the violence that has claimed the lives of 833 people since President Gloria Arroyo assumed the Presidency in 2001.

The two Filipino witnesses to the hearing, Bishop Eliezer Pascua, general secretary of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, and Marie Hilao-Enriquez, general secretary of Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of Human Rights), were part of a 9-member ecumenical delegation who are now in Washington, D.C. to present a new report on the unabated and unpunished series of politically motivated murders in the Philippines and to urge Congress and U.S. church leaders to exert pressure on the government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to put an end to the killings.

The delegation will also meet with the staff of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, headed by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-California), in a House briefing.

All members of the Philippine delegation will be in attendance at the briefing.Both the Senate hearing and the House briefing were secured by the concerted efforts of church and ecumenical bodies led by the Rev. Bob Edgar, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA and a former member of Congress, and grassroots organizations in the US that lobbied their respective members of Congress to have the committees of Sen. Boxer and Rep. Lantos hold these meetings at the time that the high-level church delegation from the Philippines is in Washington, DC.

The report on the political killings in the Philippines will be released during the hearing at the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and at the briefing with the House Committee Foreign Affairs staff.The Filipino delegation will also present its findings in a conference in Washington starting today until March 14.

The International Ecumenical Conference on Human Rights in the Philippines, has been called by US, Canadian and ecumenical church leaders specifically to address the human rights situation in the Philippines.Others scheduled to testify at the Senate subcommittee committee hearing are Eric John, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; Jonathan Farrar, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Department; T. Kumar, advocacy director for Asia and Pacific of Amnesty International USA; and G. Eugene Martin, executive director of the PhilippineFacilitation Project of the US Institute of Peace.

Aside from Pascua and Hilao-Enriquez, the other members of the delegation are Sharon Rose Joy Ruiz-Duremdes, general secretary of National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP); Fr. Jose P. Dizon, executive director of the Workers Assistance Center, Inc. (WAC); Bishop Solito Toquero, resident bishop of the United Methodist Church (UMC); Rev. Deogracias Iniguez, the Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Kalookan; Atty. Edre Olalia, of the Counsels for the Defense of Liberties (CODAL). Also Athea Peñalosa, information and publicity coordinator of the Children’s Rehabilitation Center (CRC; Amirah Ali Lidasan, secretary-general and co-founder of the Moro-Christian People’s Alliance.

Since January 2001, the number of persons killed in political assassinations has reached 833, according to Karapatan. In 2006 alone, there were 207 extra-judicial killings in the Philippines, which translates to an average of four persons killed per week. Prior to the Philippines human rights conference, the delegation also spoke about the condition in the Philippines at the fifth annual Ecumenical Advocacy Days Conference, March 10 – 12, in Washington.

The conference was attended by some 1,300 faith-based and civil society leaders and activists concerned with U.S. foreign and domestic policies.The Philippine report, “’Let the Stones Cry Out‘: An Ecumenical Report on Human Rights in the Philippines and a Call to Action.” was prepared by the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP).

The 86-page report details cases of political killings and studies the chilling pattern and alarming proportions with which these assaults on life were perpetrated.The report links the unbridled political killings to the Arroyo government’s counter-insurgency program.

“The manner with which the victims were executed or abducted was done professionally and systematically, establishing a connection between the national security strategy and the incidents of violations,” the NCCP said in the report.

The document likewise mentions the poor record of the Philippine government in complying not only with the procedures required of a member of the United Nationsbut also of its failure to adhere to its declared commitments to the UN HumanRights Council.

The report to be released by the NCCP is the latest one to pin the responsibility for the killings to Philippine military and security forces.On February 21, Prof. Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, asked the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to “acknowledge” its involvement in the extra-judicialkillings and conduct a “genuine” investigation.

The UN Special Rapporteur spent ten days in the Philippines to investigate the extra-judicial killings and related human rights violations and met with President Arroyo and other government officials , human rights groups and victims’ familiesOn March 6, the U.S. State Department, in its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2006, said that during the year, a number of unexplained killings in the Philippines were committed “apparently by elements of the security forces.”

The human rights situation in the Philippines has gone so bad that even the commission formed by President Arroyo herself to investigate the political killings came out with a report naming a retired Philippine Army General Jovito Palparan along with other generals as the “prime suspect behind the extra-judicial killings” in the country.

The commission, headed by a former Supreme Court justice, called on President Arroyo to punish those who were responsible for the killings.Victims were killed for their political beliefs, for exercising their freedom of expression and for opting to live by their Christian mission of serving their fellow brethren.

Among those killed were lawyers, human rights defenders, journalists, church leaders, local officials, community leaders and organizers, students, peasants, indigenous leaders, workers, professionals, women and children. Twenty-five church people were among those who were killed. (www.philippinesadvocacy.org)