Filipino Church Leaders Bring Issue of Slays before Int’l Bodies

Two of the nine-member Philippine delegation of human rights defenders named the “Ecumenical Voice for Peace and Human Rights in the Philippines” shared the outcome of their lobbying efforts before various international organizations and entities in a press conference last week in Quezon City.

BY EMILY VITAL
Bulatlat

Members of the "Ecumenical Voice for Peace and Human Rights in the Philippines" meet with North American legislators

Two of the nine-member Philippine delegation of human rights defenders named the “Ecumenical Voice for Peace and Human Rights in the Philippines” shared the outcome of their lobbying efforts before various international organizations and entities in a press conference last week in Quezon City.

Bp. Eliezer Pascua, general secretary of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) and Sharon Rose Joy Ruiz-Duremdes, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP) arrived in the Philippines early last week from North America.

“The lobby work in North America was an important step to intensify the international pressure to stop the killings in the Philippines,” Duremdes said.

Members of the delegation presented before international conferences their report titled, Let the Stones Cry Out: An Ecumenical Report on Human Rights in the Philippines.

The 90-page report contains information on the violations and evidence of the complicity of government security forces, and discusses the historical, social, economic and political context in which the violations are committed.

The report’s introduction dramatizes the current human rights situation in the Philippines:

The Philippine Government has launched relentless military campaigns against the 'enemies of the state' and in the name of the 'rule of law' and 'political stability.’ But the results of this strategy have been mounting reports of dead bodies sprawled on highways and bushes, of female students abducted by armed men in the dead of night, never to be seen again, of the cries of anguish of mothers as their sons – felled by assassins’ bullets – die in their arms, of a well-loved Bishop bathed in his own blood after being stabbed several times, and of children terrorized and traumatized by soldiers who have taken over their villages.

In the U.S., the team attended a hearing before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee headed by Sen. Barbara Boxer. 

At the hearing, the team urged the Foreign Relations Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives to urge the Philippine Government to stop the killings, to bring perpetrators to justice and to rescind labeling human rights activists as "enemies of the state." Duremdes related that Senator Boxer accepted all their calls.

In reaction to accusations from some Philippine government officials that the hearings in the U.S. were a case of intervention into domestic affairs, Duremdes said: “We believe that respect for human rights goes beyond national boundaries and anyone has a right to raise human rights issues anywhere, everywhere. What the team did was to merely remind the Philippine government of its duty to comply with its commitment to uphold international law.”

Duremdes also clarified that it was the churches in the U.S. that asked for the hearing and that they were only invited as resource persons.

The team also participated in the fifth annual Advocacy Days, an event sponsored by more than 50 churches that draws 1,000 people to Washington to lobby their senators and congressmen.  The team also came to address the International Ecumenical Conference on Human Rights in the Philippines on March 12-14.

Meanwhile, Duremdes said, in Canada they challenged the Canadian government, through its members of Parliament to denounce the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, to review its development and military assistance to the Philippines insofar as this is being used to exacerbate the killings of human rights defenders and social activists. 

“Our experience in Canada was one of genuine openness on the part of the members of the Parliament to raise the issue in the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the House of Commons,” she said. “The churches, human rights and justice groups readily offered support in sustaining the campaign though public awareness building and lobby work with their MPs.” 

At the time of their visit, the House of Commons was in recess.

Duremdes said that some members of the team are in Geneva to submit the ecumenical report before the UN Human Rights Council.

Other members of the Philippine delegation include Most Rev. Deogracias Iniguez, D.D. of the Commission on Ecumenical Affairs of the Catholic Bishop's Conference of the Philippines (CBCP); Amirah Ali Lidasan, secretary-general and co-founder of the Moro-Christian People's Alliance (MCPA); Fr. Rex R.B. Reyes of the Christian Unity and Ecumenical Relations of the NCCP;

Rev. Marma Urbano, a pastor of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) and executive director of the Institute for Religion and Culture; Sr. Maureen Catabian of the Women and Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation of the Religious of the Good Shepherd; and, Marie Hilao-Enriquez, general secretary of human rights group Karapatan also formed part of the delegation. 

James Winkler, general secretary of the U.S.-based United Methodist Church - General Board of Church and Society, and Rev. Liberato Bautista, assistant general secretary for United Nations and International Affairs accompanied the Philippine delegation. Bulatlat 

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