UN Convention
Last week, France expressed concern over the disappearances and urged Manila to ratify the United Nations International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. “We do regret and condemn disappearances anywhere in the world,” Gerard Chesnel, the French ambassador to the Philippines, said last week. “It’s something that democratic countries cannot accept.”
The European Union, which has been consistently monitoring the human-rights situation in the Philippines, will send this month a team of human-rights experts to Manila in a mission Alistair MacDonald, head of the EU delegation to Manila, described as an assessment of needs.
Hardly a day goes by without a fresh reminder of the essential importance of human rights in this country,” MacDonald told the Agence-France Presse in an interview last month. While he commended the Philippine government for its efforts to investigate the disappearances, particularly the case of Jonas Burgos, he said he was “shocked about what this suggests about the culture of impunity in this country.”
The Roman Catholic Church has also chimed in. Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, expressed outrage over the disappearances, which he said shamed and saddened the Church. Our prayer is that they will be allowed to return safe and sound to their grieving and anxious families, to enjoy basic freedom,” Lagdameo said in a statement.
Felixberto Calang, a protestant bishop and known human rights advocate in the Southern Philippines, believes that these disappearances are part of the states campaign against political dissenters. It is doing so with impunity, without fear of accountability, and in full view of the international community that has repeatedly condemned the countrys darkening human rights record, he said last week.
The military has staunchly defended itself against the allegations. The armed forces said in a statement last month that it does not condone human rights violations and if there is any soldier found guilty of such will face the full force of the penalty corresponding to his crime. It challenged its accusers to file charges in court.
In February, Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings who came to the country in February to investigate, blamed the Philippine military on the atrocities and said that armed forces was in almost total denial of these atrocities.
The Arroyo administration, on the other hand, said it has done its best to investigate human rights violations and has pointed to the fact that, on May 17, the Philippines was reelected to the UN Human Rights Council, the 47-member UN body tasked to promote human rights.
“The Philippines reelection to the council is a clear vote of confidence for the Philippines and President Arroyos efforts to move forward the global agenda of upholding and protecting human rights,” said Alberto Romulo, Arroyos foreign-affairs secretary.
Extrajudicial Killings
