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Karapatan renewed calls for increased efforts of the international community to monitor the human rights situation in the Philippines and to take more meaningful and decisive steps such as independent investigations towards justice and accountability under the Marcos Jr. administration, as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report on the Philippines in the 51st session of the UN Human Rights Council and with the recent statement of Marcos Jr. rejecting investigations of the International Criminal Court.

A decade since the United Nations Human Rights Committee conducted a review on the Philippine government’s compliance to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the State party will undergo a fifth review before the UN treaty body this coming October 2022, with non-governmental organizations providing alternative submissions to the government report.

Human rights group Karapatan and Tanggol Bayi, an association of women human rights defenders, submitted their 29-page joint alternative report on September 12, covering human rights issues during the administrations of Benigno Aquino III and Rodrigo Duterte, as well as the first months of the Marcos Jr. administration.  

In a press conference, martial law survivors and son of one of the named plaintiffs in the landmark class action suit in Hawaii, US decried the upcoming state visit of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the United States, calling it an “insult” to human rights violations victims as they mark the 50th year after the imposition of martial law by his father, the dictator Marcos Sr.

 

After the Court of Appeals 12th Division declared void the search warrants used against activists Reina Mae Nasino, Alma Moran and Ram Bautista, rights group Karapatan echoed their families’ demand for their immediate release, and emphasized that “the use of questionable search warrants and planting of evidence against activists and dissidents should stop for good.”

Rights group Karapatan criticized Sen. Francis Tolentino for his remarks made on August 31, 2022 at the Senate proposing measures requiring government employees to disclose information on their relatives who may have connections with so-called terrorist organizations.

Karapatan denounces the arrest of longtime women’s rights activist Atel Hijos yesterday, August 31, 2022 in Butuan City as yet another reprehensible act that shows how the judicial system is being weaponized against human rights defenders, following numerous other cases of trumped up charges against and arrests of human rights defenders in the Caraga region.

“The case of Adora Faye de Vera is more than what the current Marcos administration paints it to be. It is a strong testament to the prevailing impunity that has seen resurgence with the installation of the dictator’s son into the presidency.

In commemoration of the International Day of the Disappeared today, August 30, families and friends of victims of enforced disappearance under Desaparecidos (Families of the Disappeared for Justice) and advocates from the Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law (CARMMA) and Karapatan gathered at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani to renew their call to surface the 1,900 desaparecidos, from the Marcos dictatorship to the Duterte administration. 

Karapatan denounced the increasing use of Republic Act No. 10168 or the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act in the political persecution of humanitarian workers and human rights defenders in the Philippines, as the human rights group expressed support for individuals from the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines - Northern Mindanao who were recently charged under the said law.

Justice remains elusive for peace advocate Randall “Ka Randy” Echanis and human rights worker Zara Alvarez two years after their murders, human rights alliance Karapatan said on Wednesday, as the group renewed its calls for accountability and for an end to the red-tagging of human rights defenders and advocates, which the group asserted was “tantamount to a death sentence.”