When Syrian government military forces “summarily executed” 108 people—including 34 women and 49 children—in the village of Houla on May 25, 2012, the world reacted quickly. The United Nations Security Council unanimously condemned the Syrian government and on June 1, the United Nations Human Rights Council convened in Geneva and voted to condemn Syria with a resounding vote of 41 to 3 with only Russia, China and Cuba voting against the resolution. Regretfully, the Philippines chose to be absent from the vote.
“Apparently the Philippine delegation had better things to do during the crucial Human Rights Council vote on Syria,” lamented Julie de Rivero, the Geneva director of Human Rights Watch. “One has to wonder why the Philippines became a Human Rights Council member in the first place,” she said.
New York-based Human Rights Watch asked the Philippine government to explain its vote or decision not to vote. Did the Philippines not consider Syria a human rights violator?
Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario matter-of-factly replied that the decision was driven by concern for the welfare of Filipinos working in Syria.
“As must be known to all, our nationals in Syria who are highly vulnerable are urgently being repatriated, and we are receiving assistance from the Syrian government in this effort. As a result, the Philippines was unable to vote for the said resolution,” Del Rosario explained.
The problem with his reply is that the other countries who voted to condemn “the widespread and systematic human rights violations by the Syrian authorities” also have nationals in Syria and are similarly concerned for their welfare and safe repatriation. Yet that concern did not deter them from voting to denounce Syria for killing more than 12,000 of its citizens in the last several months.
It may be simplistic to conclude that Philippine foreign policy is based primarily on the government’s concern for the safety and welfare of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). Several instances of Philippine foreign policy decisions over the past decade may support this conclusion.
Before US Pres. George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, he organized a “Coalition of the Willing” and pressured nations dependent on US aid to send troops to Iraq as part of the propaganda effort to show that allies were supporting the US invasion.
Philippine Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo dispatched a 51 member “humanitarian” contingent of troops and police to aid in Bush’s war efforts. However, a year later, when Islamic militants captured Angelo De La Cruz, an OFW working in Iraq, and threatened to behead him if the Philippines did not leave Iraq immediately, Arroyo quickly caved in to the kidnappers’ demands and pulled the Philippine troops out of Iraq.
This move by the Philippines prompted American comedian Jay Leno to quip on his Tonight show that the Philippines finally won a gold medal in the Olympics for the sport of sprinting out of Iraq in record time, with its tail between its legs.
On December 10, 2010, Philippine Pres. Benigno Aquino III bowed to pressure from Beijing to boycott the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway honoring Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiabo, ironically considered “China’s Ninoy Aquino”, who is serving an 11-year jail term for advocating political reforms in China.
President Aquino explained that his decision to boycott the Nobel rites was to “advance the interest of the Filipino citizens’ first.” He said he did not want to put at risk the lives of the five Filipinos who were sentenced to death for drug offenses in China.
Aquino’s goodwill gesture did not work as China rejected the Philippines’ pleas for clemency and executed three of the “drug mules” on March 30, 2011.
After the Philippines engaged in a standoff with China over ownership of the Scarborough Shoal on April 10 this year, China retaliated by imposing a travel ban to the Philippines (reportedly causing more than 20,000 Chinese cancelations to Boracay Beach) and blocking the entry of Philippine bananas to China. When Philippine banana growers and tourism industry bigwigs pressed Malacañang to resolve its differences with China, Pres. Aquino ordered the pull-out of the two remaining Philippine Navy ships in the Shoal.
Pres. Aquino explained that his decision was based on reports of an impending typhoon that could imperil the safety of the sailors on the ships while Sec. Del Rosario claimed that the pull-out was pursuant to an agreement with China for both countries to mutually withdraw their ships from the Shoal. China denied there was any such agreement to do so and kept its ships in the Shoal and the feared typhoon somehow never materialized.
Whether it is the kidnapping of an OFW in Iraq or the banning of Chinese tourism to Boracay, whether it is the threat to execute Filipino drug mules in China or the fear of jeopardizing the repatriation of OFWs in Syria, the Philippines has shown itself time and again to readily buckle to pressure.
The criticism of the Philippines by Human Rights Watch was not just limited to the Philippine vote in the UN Human Rights Council. On June 27 last week, the group issued a scathing indictment of Pres. Aquino for failing to “hold accountable” the Philippine security forces responsible for serious abuses since he assumed the presidency.
“The Aquino government has not successfully prosecuted a single case of extrajudicial killing or enforced disappearance, including those committed during his presidency,” Human Rights Watch reported.
The group noted that in his inaugural speech on June 30, 2010, Aquino gave “marching orders” to his justice department to “begin the process of providing true and complete justice for all.” Several months later, at an event to commemorate human rights, he proclaimed that, “The culture of silence, injustice and impunity that once reigned is now a thing of the past.”
In its 2011 report “No Justice Just Adds to the Pain,” Human Rights Watch detailed 10 instances of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances in the Philippines since Pres. Aquino took office. No one has been arrested in any of the cited cases.
Perhaps Sec. Del Rosario should have explained to Human Rights Watch that the Philippines cannot condemn human rights abuses in Syria if it cannot even prosecute them in the Philippines. But that would have been too flippant and too honest an answer.
The Philippines’ shameful no vote in the UN Human Rights Council was egregious enough. What was perhaps even more appalling was that no one in the Philippines bothered to condemn the no vote of the Philippines on the Syria massacre. Not one member of Congress, not one civil society group, not one newspaper editorial protested the weak-kneed position of the Philippine government.
Where is the outrage?
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