Philippine human rights groups on Wednesday, April 6, renewed calls for an independent investigation by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s (UN HRC) into what they described as a “human rights crisis” in the country.
In joint reports submitted on March 31 for the 41st session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the council, various human rights groups said “[m]ajority, if not all the recommendations” of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and of UN Special Procedures during the third cycle of the UPR in 2017 “remain unheeded.”
In their reports, rights groups Karapatan, Tanggol Bayi, the Samahan ng Ex-detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto, Desaparecidos, and Hustisya said “a human rights crisis besets the Philippines as we bear witness to gross violations on the right to life and civil liberties.”
They also noted what they described as “the spiraling climate of impunity and the dire lack of effective domestic mechanisms for redress and accountability, closing civic and democratic spaces, and unmet obligations to core international human rights conventions.”
The groups said that the Philippine government accepted only 103 out of the 257 recommendations from States during the 2017 UPR.
In a statement, the human rights groups said that “despite numerous recommendations by States during the 2017 UPR regarding extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations, the killings, enforced disappearances, illegal or arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, threats, harassment, forcible evacuation, among other rights violations, have continued with bare impunity against families, communities and human rights defenders.”
They said the allehed violations were committed in the course of the implementation of the government’s “drug war,” counter-insurgency program and “policies that undermine human rights and legitimate expressions of freedoms and political dissent.”
Along with an independent international investigation into the human rights situation in the Philippines, the report also recommended for the Philippine government to stop the implementation of the drug war and counterinsurgency campaigns that have targeted poor communities, human rights defenders and dissenters.
They also called for the repeal of “legislative, administrative, executive and judicial acts that violate human rights” including the Anti-Terrorism Act and the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act.
In a separate joint report, rights group Karapatan and global civil society alliance Civicus expressed concern over the “systematic intimidation, attacks and vilification of civil society and activists, an increased crackdown on media freedoms and the emerging prevalence of a pervasive culture of impunity.”
Karapatan and Civicus recommended in their joint report the abolition of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict and the rescinding of Executive Order No. 70, as they called on the Philippine government to likewise repeal the Anti-Terrorism Act and to immediately end the red-tagging of civil society organizations and activists, and “halt any forms and threats, intimidation and digital attacks against them.”
