Human rights group Karapatan are wary that death penalty will affect activists and political prisoners. In this file photo political prisoners detained in Compostela Valley Provincial Rehabilitation Center start their week-long hunger strike on December 3, 2016 to demand the release of all political prisoners in the country. (file photo)
DAVAO CITY, Philippines—Human rights group Karapatan warned Wednesday that the proposal to reinstate death penalty in the country will affect human rights defenders, dissenters, and especially political prisoners.
“The executive branch, Congress, military, police, prosecutors and courts may collude to criminalize the exercise of political beliefs and political actions that seek to institute meaningful and comprehensive reforms and change,” Cristina Palabay, Karapatan secretary general, said in a statement.
Karapatan is strongly denouncing the re-instatement of death penalty, saying “it will mostly affect the poor who have far less or no access to resources to defend themselves before courts.
Apart from the HR defenders, activists, and political dissenters, Palabay also said that the lives of political prisoners will be endangered under the proposed measure.
“With this measure, there is danger that political prisoners will be dealt with capital punishment, when they should be released on just grounds,” Palabay explained.
“Justice in this kind of system remains elusive to the victims and families of crimes and human rights abuses, as long as the laws and the agencies and institutions who implement and interpret laws are corrupt and lawless themselves.”
The human rights group claimed that death penalty violates the right to life and the absolute prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
At least 249 out of the 392 political prisoners were slapped with “fabricated” murder cases and are arrested and detained as the “spurious” filing of cases with “defective” warrants and “perjured” testimonies of hired witnesses by the military and common practice of planting of evidence.
“The death penalty is essentially a legislative fiat to the current spate of extrajudicial killings in the country. In the context of a bankrupt and corrupt justice system that favors the moneyed and powerful people, the death penalty will only increase the prevalence of impunity and fascist attacks against the poor,” Palabay pointed out.
Even the Catholic bishops of the Philippines also register their strong objections to restoration of death penalty.
“The Gospel of the Lord Jesus is the Gospel of Life. It is this Gospel we must preach. It is this Gospel that we must uphold,” Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, said in a Jan. 30 statement.
“We oppose proposals and moves to return the death penalty into the Philippine legal system,” he added. “We urge the government to champion life for all!” (davaotoday.com)
