Remove RP from UN rights body--activists

MANILA, Philippines -- Human rights advocates are pushing for the removal of the Philippines from membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNCHR) and the imposition of sanctions for what they called unabated extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances under the Arroyo administration.

Bayan Muna (People First) party list Representative Teodoro Casiño and the Reverend Rex Reyes, general-secretary of the National Council of Churches of the Philippines (NCCP), made the call Tuesday ahead of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the country’s human rights record by the UNHCR on April 18.

The Philippines is among the first batch of 16 UN members up for review in accordance with a resolution issued by the UNCHR.

The resolution provides for “a universal periodic review, based on objective and reliable information, of the fulfillment by each state of its human rights obligations and commitments in a manner which ensures universality of coverage and equal treatment with respect to all states.”

The so-called Troika of Rapporteurs will facilitate the review of the human rights situation in the Philippines based on three documents that would be required of each state: a nation report or national information prepared by the state under review; a compilation done by the Office of the Higher Commission on Human Rights (OCHR); and a summary prepared by the OCHR of reliable information submitted by other stakeholders, including non-government organizations and national human rights institutions.

After the review, the Troika will then submit a report to the Human Rights Council plenary.

Casiño called the UPR a “logical next step to muster broader international support after the government’s failure to stop the killings in many parts of the country.”

In early 2008 alone, the human rights group Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Right) recorded 14 extrajudicial killings and two enforced disappearances.

“We need to engage in the UPR process in order to tell the world the truth about the human rights situation under the Arroyo regime and to make the Arroyo regime accountable to its international human rights obligations,” Casiño said at a forum in Quezon City.

“In this way, we hope to sustain and even increase local and, especially, international pressure on the Philippine government to put a stop to the human rights atrocities and the impunity by which these are committed,” he said.

The leftist solon expressed hopes that, after reviewing the country’s human rights record, the UNCHR would reprimand and, if possible, sanction the Philippines for the extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

“It would be a start, for example, if the Philippine membership in the UNCHR would be revoked,” he said.

The UNCHR, Casiño said, must also ask the Philippines to immediately implement the recommendations of UN special rapporteur Philip Alston on the killings and disappearances.

Speaking at the same forum as Casiño, Reyes also said the country no longer deserves to sit in the UNCHR because of its human rights record.

“The Philippine government does not deserve to sit in the UNHRC,” he said.

Referring to an earlier finding by the Permanent People’s Tribunal Second Session on the Philippines, Reyes said it is unacceptable for the Philippines to be a member of the UNHRC “because it undermines the credibility of the UN in this field; is an intolerable offense to the victims; and is a denial of the many well-documented denunciations of the dramatic violations of human rights in the Philippines.”

“It is a source of inordinate embarrassment that the Philippine government is churning all these lies and hypocrisy masquerading through an idyllic, rosy image of the country’s rights record before the international community of nations,” Reyes pointed out.

Former vice president Teofosito Guingona, Caloocan Bishop Deogracias Iñiquez, Bishop Julio Labayen, and families of human rights victims were also present at the forum.

(By Maila Ager, INQUIRER.net Remove RP from UN rights body--activists)