MANILA, Philippines—A Filipino lawyer, speaking on behalf of an international lawyers group, has appealed for help from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to stop the extrajudicial killings and abductions in the Philippines, which has not spared lawyers and other human rights defenders.
Filipino lawyer Edre Olalia, speaking before the UNHRC’s 7th session in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday, backed the recommendation of Hina Jilani, special representative of the UN secretary general, to examine the situation of human rights defenders in the Philippines in the UN’s upcoming Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
Olalia, an officer of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers and the Counsels for the Defense of Liberties, delivered the oral intervention of the Belgium-based International Association of Democratic Lawyers to Jilani’s special report on human rights defenders.
The periodic review covers the human rights situation in 192 member-countries based on reports from different contributors, including nongovernment organizations. Each country’s situation is then examined during a three-hour debate.
The situation in the Philippines will be examined in the first session, from April 7 to 18, along with that in 15 other countries.
The human rights group Karapatan said about 900 people, mostly leftist political activists, have been murdered since President Macapagal-Arroyo came to power in 2001.
Jilani’s report specifically mentioned the murder of human rights and labor lawyer Gil Gojol of Sorsogon in December 2006, and the surveillance of the Quezon City-based Pro-Labor Legal Assistance Center, which provides free legal aid to workers.
Olalia said the attacks against lawyers violated the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the 1990 Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers and the 1998 UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.
“These are also but part of the impunity of the attacks against hundreds of other human rights defenders—human rights workers, peasant organizers, trade unionists, church people and others—within the context of a militarist counterinsurgency approach ironically called Oplan Bantay Laya (Freedom Watch),” he said.
He said the cases raised questions about the Philippines’ membership in the council.
Earlier, UN special rapporteur Philip Alston said the government’s counterinsurgency strategy that openly accuses certain mass organizations of being “rebel fronts” contributed to the killings. He also said the military leadership was “in a state of denial.”
Although the rate of such incidents dropped last year, apparently as a result of international pressure, cases of summary executions continued to be reported, he said.
