As the human rights group expresses its
condemnation on the recent extrajudicial killing (EJK) of Willem Geertman,
Karapatan today said that the human rights situation in the country under the
Aquino administration has gone worse.
Cristina Palabay, spokesperson of Karapatan said
the rights group has documented 95 victims of extrajudicial killings (EJK) from July 2010 to June 30, 2012, with Geertman as the 96th reported victim in the first two years of Aquino. Among the 95 victims, 43 of them were rights workers in various organizations and institutions. Many are farmers, indigenous peoples and environmental activists.
As the human rights group expresses its
condemnation on the recent extrajudicial killing (EJK) of Willem Geertman,
Karapatan today said that the human rights situation in the country under the
Aquino administration has gone worse.
Cristina Palabay, spokesperson of Karapatan said
the rights group has documented 95 victims of extrajudicial killings (EJK) from July 2010 to June 30, 2012, with Geertman as the 96th reported victim in the first two years of Aquino. Among the 95 victims, 43 of them were rights workers in various organizations and institutions. Many are farmers, indigenous peoples and environmental activists.
“More than a month after GPH was grilled on the
continuing EJK and rights violations and the prevalence of impunity in the
country at the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United Nations (UN),
these violations continue to be wantonly committed. Oplan Bayanihan, Aquino’s
counter-insurgency program, engenders such violations as activists continue to
be threatened, harassed, red-tagged and eventually killed like Geertman,” she
explained.
In the UPR, some 23 foreign missions earlier
expressed concern on the continuing rights violations in the Philippines and
have forwarded recommendations to the GPH. Immediately after the UPR the
European Parliament, through a resolution, voiced out similar concern.
With Geertman’s killing, several international
solidarity groups and institutions have demanded to the Aquino administration
to stop the killings and to scrap Oplan Bayanihan, among them are Nederlands-Filippijnse
Solidariteitsbeweging (Dutch-Philippine Solidarity Movement), International
League of People’s Struggles (ILPS), the Hong Kong Campaign for the Advancement of Human Rights and Peace in the
Philippines, the Philippines
Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA), Auckland Philippines Solidarity (APS),
Wellington Kiwi Pinoy (WKP), Philippine US Solidarity Organization, Canada
Philippines Solidarity for Human Rights, and the International Coordinating
Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICCHRP). The Dutch Ambassador to
the Philippines also expressed “his sincere hope that authorities will hold
those behind the killing accountable.”
On June 30, Karapatan also documented the killing
of Romualdo Palispis, chair of the Justice and Peace Action Group (JPAG) in
Aurora Province, who met with Geertman shortly before he was arbitrarily
executed. Both were active in leaders of the campaign of farmers in Aurora
against the Aurora Pacific Ecozone and Freeport Authority project (APECO). Both
received threats and tagged by the military as supporters of the Communist Party
of the Philippines (CPP) and the New Peoples’ Army (NPA).
Palabay said the extrajudicial killings and
military operations affecting whole communities perpetuated in the framework of
Oplan Bayanihan aim to counter the people’s growing opposition to anti-poor
projects of the Aquino administration. ###