Human rights group Karapatan urged the Philippine Congress to call off moves to revive death penalty, as more legislators withdraw support for the reimposition of capital punishment in the country.
“We urge legislators … to withdraw their support and move to dispense any further action that push to enact the pending bills reviving the death penalty,” read a statement by Cristina Palabay, secretary general of Karapatan.
She expressed hope that recent pronouncements made by former proponents and supporters of death penalty “will pave the way to finally withdraw the bills filed in Congress.”
The Commission on Human Rights has earlier also urged Congress to scrap all pending proposals seeking the reimposition of death penalty in the country.
In a statement, Commissioner Karen Gomez-Dumpit welcomed the statements made by some senators abandoning their support for death penalty.
Senators Panfilo Lacson and Vicente Sotto III, main proponents of the revival of capital punishment, have earlier announced thay they have changed their minds about it.
Dumpit said she hopes that the senators’ announcement “is enough to turn the tide in the Senate and halt the proposals to reintroduce capital punishment in the country.”
“We ask other legislators who have given their support for this counterproductive measure to reconsider their position and urge them to affirm the right to life and dignity of all persons,” she said.
Karapatan’s Palabay, meanwhile, urged legislators “to pursue reforms in the justice system, and to uphold people’s rights and civil liberties.”
“We challenge them to do it now, and show their support for the people’s clamor for genuine justice amid the sad state of human rights in the country,” she added.
There are at least six bills in the Senate that propose to reimpose the death penalty in the country. In the House of Representatives, at least 12 bills were filed in 2020, seeking to revive death penalty.
“We continue to stand firm against the reimposition of capital punishment in the country,” said Palabay.
“It is extremely dangerous, an affront to human rights and civil liberties, and an ineffective deterrent to crime, contrary to the propositions of those advocating for its reimposition,” she added.
On June 24, 2006, the Philippines abolished capital punishment.
Months before the passage of the law that ended the imposition of death penalty, former president Gloria Arroyo issued a moratorium on carrying out capital punishment.
In April 2006, the Philippines commuted the sentences of some 1,230 death row inmates to life imprisonment – the largest ever commutation of death sentences, according to Amnesty International.
In his State of the Nation Address in July 2020, President Rodrigo Duterte asked Congress to pass a bill that will reinstate the death penalty by lethal injection for drug-related crimes.
