We would like to express our grave concern and distress over news reports in the Philippines on the complaint of former Phil. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo before the United Nations Working Group for Arbitrary Detention on alleged violation of her civil and political rights. The said complaint was supposedly prepared and written by rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin Clooney.
We would like to express our grave concern and distress over news reports in the Philippines on the complaint of former Phil. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo before the United Nations Working Group for Arbitrary Detention on alleged violation of her civil and political rights. The said complaint was supposedly prepared and written by rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin Clooney.
10 March 2015
MR. VLADIMIR TOCHILOVSKY
Chair Rapporteur
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
United Nations Human Rights
Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights
Dear Mr. Tochilovsky:
Greetings of peace from the Philippines!
We wrote this letter to express our grave concern and distress over news reports in the Philippines on the complaint of former Phil. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo before the United Nations Working Group for Arbitrary Detention on alleged violation of her civil and political rights. The said complaint was supposedly prepared and written by rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin Clooney.
Lest the UN WGAD and Ms. Alamuddin-Clooney be misinformed further, may we express our opinion as a human rights organization in the Philippines that has monitored and documented numerous human rights violations of the Philippine government during the administration of former Pres. Arroyo. We also offer our views as an organization that has consistently filed complaints before the WGAD and the UN Human Rights Council, and has been one of the references by former UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston in his report on the Philippines in 2008.
In our view, it is the height of irony that Ms. Arroyo is now complaining over “violations” of her civil and political rights, when she enjoys the most special treatment of detained persons in the Philippines under the current Aquino administration. For the WGAD’s information, she is currently detained in a hospital suite at the Veteran’s Memorial Medical Center, a far cry from the detention facilities of political prisoners and common offenders in the Philippines who are in box-like prison cells. While she enjoys the first-class amenities of the hospital, many of the political prisoners and common offenders are not given timely and sufficient medical care, as in the case of land rights activist Andrea Rosal, who lost her two-day old baby because of dire conditions in jail and lack of medical attention.
Four years after charges for violation of human rights against Ms. Arroyo were brought before Philippine court, she has yet to be made accountable for the killings of members and pastors of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, and for the torture, illegal arrest and detention of 43 health workers, who were among those her administration’s victims.
Thus, it is truly ironic that Ms. Arroyo would speak of civil and political rights, when her administration is considered as among the most repressive regimes in the Philippines. Karapatan has documented 1, 206 victims of extrajudicial killing, 206 victims of enforced disappearances, more than 2,000 cases of illegal arrests, and thousands forcibly evacuated during her nine-year presidency. The Arroyo administration has violated every single article of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
In 2007, Prof. Philip Alston, who was then the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, went to the Philippines for an official visit to investigate the cases of extrajudicial killings under the Gloria Arroyo administration. In what would be referred to as the Alston report, he pointed out the responsibility of the government, military and police in the targeted killings and disappearances of hundreds of political activists and those tagged as rebel supporters as part of the counter-insurgency campaign of the State.
In 2008 and in 2010, the UN Human Rights Committee held the Arroyo government, including its posterboy Gen. Jovito “The Butcher” Palparan, responsible and accountable for the extrajudicial killing of Karapatan human rights workers Eden Marcellana and Benjaline Hernandez, and peasant leader Eddie Gumanoy.
Sadly, years after such reports of UN special procedures and treaty bodies, most of the recommendations remain unheeded or just given lip service as perpetrators and Ms. Arroyo remain free from accountability. Rights violations such as extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture and enforced disappearances of human rights defenders, political activists, and community leaders resisting large scale development projects, particularly indigenous leaders, are still being committed with impunity under the current administration, which we deem is no different from Ms. Arroyo’s kind of governance.
You may refer to the complaints we filed before your office on the said violations, particularly on the cases of arbitrary arrests and detention.
We hope that the UN WGAD would consider our views, and those of the victims of rights violations and their kin under, on the Arroyo regime. We also hope that the Working Group would address the numerous complaints filed by persons persecuted by the Arroyo and Aquino regimes, most of them from the poorest sections of Philippine society, instead of heeding the selfish tricks of oppressive and megalomaniac presidents.
Sincerely,
Cristina Palabay
Secretary General