CHR decision on Fil-Am activist case to perpetuate impunity – rights groups

During the CHR hearings following the incident, Palparan and Alcover both branded Roxas as an NPA guerrilla. Both also attempted to discredit then CHR chair de Lima.

Reyes called the resolution “an embarrassment for the CHR.” “It’s also a great injustice after Melissa [Roxas] fully cooperated with the probe of the Commission. This tends to discourage victims seeking the CHR’s help,” he added.

Palabay said the resolution is a “drawback to the struggle for justice of victims like Roxas.”

Human rights group Karapatan said that with the CHR resolution, “the crime of torture will have its heyday under the Aquino administration.”

“The perpetrators will only have to make sure that they are not identified as State agents and voila, there is no crime of torture!” Karapatan chair Marie Hilao-Enriquez said. “This is one way of rendering inutile and ineffective the anti-torture law or RA 9745, touted by the previous regime as a way of helping victims to obtain effective remedies. It is no wonder that the AFP feels vindicated. Indeed, this is injustice of the highest order!”

“Even as the resolution is couched in the UN language of human rights, it sends a chilling message that violations of State Parties can be effectively concealed and instead turns the tables on the NDFP on the role of so-called non-state actors, a favorite term of the present Chairperson of the CHR,” Enriquez said.

“If this is the formula of “winning the peace” under Oplan Bayanihan, we hope that the other members of the CHR will not allow themselves to be suck into this counter-insurgency machinations directed by the AFP and US military advisers and swallowed hook, line and sinker by the Aquino administration,” said Enriquez.

Karapatan said the recent move of the regime through the CHR is “one way of effectively curtailing the rights of the people. ”

In a statement issued April 26, CHR chair Loretta Ann Rosales said the CHR neither practically clear the AFP” nor did it tag the NPA responsible for the human rights violations suffered by Roxas. Rosales however maintained that “the mass of evidence gathered in the course of a rigorous field investigation consisting of several site visits, ocular inspections and witness interviews, is deemed insufficient to enable the CHR to reasonably conclude that the state agents perpetrated the acts of maltreatment or that the same were committed in government facilities.” At the same time, Rosales also reiterated that there are informants who have categorically pointed at elements of the NPA as being responsible for Melissa Roxas’ abduction and maltreatment.

NUPL’s Olalia further stated: “It will engender impunity and make the perpetrators gloat and swagger like they were her protectors rather than cut them down to size and make them accountable.”

The organization of human rights lawyers vowed to help Roxas pursue the case in all venues.?