A-Infos (en) Fwd: RESPONSE TO US STATE DEP

[krptn@webquest.com, JGA@eureka.qc.ca (Jean-Guy Aubé)]

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KARAPATAN's Response to the US State Department's "Report on Human Rights 
for the Philippines 1997" 
 
 
 
		US report on "improving" Philippine rights record is sheer rigmarole 
						February 10, 1998 
 
 
 
To "lies, damned lies, and statistics", we must add a new category: US 
State Department reports.  We in Karapatan shake our heads at the US State 
Department’s "Report on Human Rights for the Philippines 1997", which 
deserves the same kind of respect that publicity reviews get. 
 
When the report says that the number of human rights violations went down 
significantly last year, we smirk to think that the armed forces and police 
must have taken time off to pee, rob a few banks or kidnap for ransom. Yet 
levity aside, it incites moral outrage when it is suggested that "not that 
many" got shot in the back of the head, or got shanghaied by crew-cut 
jackals, or got clapped in jail for their political beliefs, as per the US 
State Department’s hosannah of human rights improvement. 
 
It is mindless to twitter about a "significant decline" in the number of 
the violated strung up on the gibbet of statistical formulation. What 
matters most—and charlatan that it is, the US State Department did not 
expressly put it that way—is that the Ramos regime undeniably violates 
human rights. Well, by not that much, the US report says, with the same 
kind of ratiocination about whether a murderer must deliver one stab or at 
least a hundred to be called a murderer. 
 
The annual report was said to have been culled from militant groups and the 
Commission on Human Rights (CHR), but Karapatan definitely had nothing to 
do with this rigmarole. We are often riled at the balderdash on whether 
human rights violations are increasing or declining. We have data that 
indicate  rampant violations of human rights and international humanitarian 
law in the country. But human rights mean more than a head count. We 
believe that human rights violations are the inevitable outcome of 
oppression and exploitation, and furthermore persist because they are 
buttressed by state policy.  
 
In many areas in the provinces, the military has long been the the real and 
absolute political authority. The military and police forces often act 
beyond the pale of law, having a free hand and overshadowing even local 
governments in their counter-insurgency operations. That is why, as the US 
State Department report admits by much, the CHR and the courts often 
dismiss the few cases filed against human rights violators. 
 
Its unbridled militarization in the countryside is the reason why the 
government balked for a long time at signing an agreement on human rights 
and international humanitarian law with the National Democratic Front 
(NDF). This now appears to be a deliberate avoidance of responsibility for 
its conduct in war. 
 
The upcoming signing of a human rights accord between the government and 
the NDF is long overdue. For all its pretense of concern for human rights, 
the US State Department report is mum on doing away with political 
repression, on the punishment of human rights violators, and on the matter 
of justice and indemnification for the victims. With its report, the US 
State Department thus comes out as a mere publicity agent for a human 
rights violator. 
 
 
(Sgd.) Antonio Liongson 
Deputy Secretary-General 
 
 
 
 
		---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
		KARAPATAN (Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights)		 
		23-D Mabuhay St., Central District, Diliman, Quezon City, PHILIPPINES 
		Tel. Nos. (++632) 434-1865 / 435-7828 
		E-mail: krptn@webquest.com 
		Website: http://freeweb.webquest.com/~krptn 
		---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
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