For
rights violations:
Arroyo
Government May Lose Foreign Aid
With human rights
violations in the Philippines being laid bare before the bar of
international public opinion, the Philippine government could end up
losing foreign aid. “When aid-giving countries look into reports showing
bad human rights records on the part of their recipients, they would be
apprehensive about continuing to give assistance,” Karapatan
secretary-general Marie Hilao-Enriquez said.
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN
REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
With human rights
violations in the Philippines being laid bare before the bar of
international public opinion, the Philippine government could end up
losing foreign aid.
This was the
observation shared by Marie Hilao-Enriquez, secretary-general of Karapatan
(Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights), in an interview with
Bulatlat over the weekend. “When aid-giving countries look into
reports showing bad human rights records on the part of their recipients,
they would be apprehensive about continuing to give assistance,” Enriquez
said.
Enriquez was one of
five leaders from non-government and people’s organizations who went to
Geneva a few weeks ago to submit complaints of human rights violations
against the Arroyo government to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
The UN body held its second session from Sept. 18 to Oct. 6. The others
were Edre Olalia of the Counsels for the Defense of Liberties (CODAL),
Danilo Ramos of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP or Philippine
Peasant Movement), Tess Vistro of the Asia-Pacific Forum on Women, Law and
Development (APWLD), and Rhoda Dalang of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance
(CPA).
The complaints
focused on high-profile cases of extra-judicial killings and enforced
disappearances.
“We went there to
inform the international community so that strong international pressure
would be generated,” the human rights leader said.
Data filed by
Karapatan at the UNHRC showed a total of 755 extra-judicial killings and
184 enforced disappearances since 2001, when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
was catapulted to power through a popular uprising.
Karapatan-Central
Luzon submitted an urgent alert showing 109 of the extra-judicial killings
and 62 of the disappearances occurred in the said region. Of these,
Karapatan-Central Luzon records further show, 71 extra-judicial killings
and 46 enforced disappearances took place from September 2005 to August
2006 – during the stint of recently-retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan, Jr.
as commanding officer of the Philippine Army’s 7th Infantry
Division, which is based at Ft. Ramon Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija.
Dalang gave an oral
presentation concerning the killings of 96 indigenous people’s leaders
since 2001. Ramos, for his part, filed on behalf of the KMP 25 cases of
extra-judicial killings of peasant leaders before the monitoring body of
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the
Philippine government is a signatory.
At the UNHRC session,
the Arroyo administration had come under fire on the issue of enforced
disappearances. The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary
Disappearances, chaired by Stephen Toope, had named the Philippines as one
of several countries with “outstanding cases” of disappearance.
“While in the past
disappearances could be blamed primarily on military dictatorships, mostly
in Latin America, today (these are) also perpetrated in more complex
situations of internal conflict, such as Colombia, Nepal, the Russian
Federation, Iraq, and the Sudan,” the group said in its report. “In other
countries, such as Algeria and the Philippines, political repression of
opponents resulted in hundreds of cases of disappearance.”
Classified as crimes
against humanity under international human rights instruments are murder,
deportation or forced transfer of population, imprisonment or other severe
deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of
international law, torture. Other crimes are persecution against any
identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic,
cultural, religious, gender, or other grounds that are universally
recognized as impermissible under international law; enforced
disappearance of persons; and other inhumane acts of a similar character
intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to
mental or physical health.
“Within the community
of nations, if you have a human rights record like that, is it not very
embarrassing?” Enriquez said. “It could draw what we may call ‘peer
pressure,’ if we talk in terms of psychology.”
With that, the
Philippine government does not only stand the risk of having its UNHRC
membership suspended: it could stand to lose aid from the international
donor community, Enriquez said.
It had happened, she
said, during the presidency of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos. “His
human rights record became a measuring stick on whether to continue giving
aid to his government,” said Enriquez, who was herself a victim of human
rights violations during Martial Law.
Development aid
donors have historically suspended assistance to their recipients on
account of human rights violations, especially when these draw
international outrage.
Various international
news reports showed that summary executions, as well as arbitrary arrests
and detentions increased in Nepal after King Gyanendra assumed power
through a coup in February 2005. Denmark suspended $26 million of
development assistance, while the United Kingdom and India suspended
military assistance, following international outcries against human rights
violations in Nepal.
Burma had a similar
experience in 1988. That year, Aung San Suu Kyi of the opposition National
League for Democracy (NLD) led a massive pro-democracy rally in protest
against the abuses of the military regime. The rally was suppressed by the
military. The NLD won in a subsequent election but the military refused to
let its winning candidates assume office. That same year, Japan – Burma’s
biggest single aid donor – suspended official development assistance.
As early as May last
year, the Reality of Aid Network – an international non-governmental
initiative producing analyses and lobbying for poverty eradication
policies and practices in the international aid regime – had called for
the cessation of all military aid to the Philippines on account of various
human rights abuses, mainly the spate of extra-judicial killings. Enriquez
said the group that went to Geneva has a similar call.
“We would like all
these to lead to a stop in foreign aid to the Philippine government,”
Enriquez said. “That is the most concrete thing that can come out of all
these, that the Philippine government can get form these.”
“The citizens of
donor countries should pressure their governments to cut aid to the
Philippine government, with its record of human rights abuses,” the human
rights leader added.
Based on data from
the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), the
Philippines’ top six aid donors are the U.S., Japan, the European Union,
Australia, Germany, and Canada. Bulatlat
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