Elisa Tita Lubi
a member of APWLD’s Program & Management Committee. She is currently a member of the National Council of BAYAN, the National Women’s Council of the Gabriela Women’s Party and a Board Member of Selda. She was on Arroyo’s list of 51 people accused of rebellion in 2006.

Tita Lubi reading the Women’s Tribunal verdict against WTO in Hong Kong, December 2005

(Excerpts from the paper presented at the Women’s Human Rights Defenders Training on the U.N. System conducted by the International Service for Human Rights and sponsored by Amihan, Karapatan and APWLD, 22-24 November 2006, Quezon City, Philippines)

Human rights defenders have a long history in the Philippines. Of more recent times, they were pushed to the forefront of the people’s movement after martial law was declared by the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in September 1972. However, martial rule failed to stop the people from fighting for their rights and struggling to achieve fundamental changes to improve their lives. Human rights defenders and politico-social activists were in the forefront of People Power I, which ousted the dictator Marcos in 1986, and in People Power II, which drove Joseph “Erap” Estrada from Malacanang in 2001. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, ironically the recipient of the biggest gift of People Power II, ascended the presidency and promptly became the kind of ruler that the people detested and did not deserve.

Despite the positive economic statistics that the Arroyo cabinet flaunts, the reality is abject poverty, unemployment, homelessness, peasant bankruptcy, trillions of pesos of government debt, unlivable wages, inadequate benefits and unbridled graft and corruption. There is undeclared martial rule characterised by political killings, enforced disappearances, other gross human rights violations (HRVs) and executive policies that justify if not encourage attacks on civil liberties. Human rights defenders are killed, persecuted, harassed and intimidated. But they remain steadfast in defending and advancing human and people’s rights, in demanding and getting justice. Most of all they continue to increase in number!

I will focus on experiences of human rights workers from Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights), the Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace (EMJP), Selda which is an organisation of former political prisoners, Desaparecidos formed by families of the disappeared inspired by the Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo of Argentina and Hustisya, or Victims of the Arroyo Regime United for Justice, a recently formed organisation of victims of HRVs under the Arroyo administration and their families.

Campaign vs Political Repression.

The main preoccupation of human rights organisations (HROs) is a sustained campaign against political repression by the Arroyo government and its arms, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP). The campaign takes the form of marches, rallies, small but high impact mass actions, quick reaction team (QRT) response, mobile propaganda teams (MPT), fact-finding and mercy missions, work slowdown or lunch-break protest action among workers, postering, painting of slogans, noise barrage, lightning rally, interfaith and ecumenical gatherings, prayer rallies, candle lighting, concerts, photo and art exhibits, public forums, press conferences and media briefings, delegations to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), pickets at AFP/PNP/NICA offices, attendance or pickets at court, Congress and Senate hearings.

This year’s issues being addressed are political killings, enforced disappearances, massacres, repressive state policies, executive orders and legislative bills such as: Operation Bantay Laya (Oplan Freedom Watch) which provided the framework for the killings; Calibrated Preemptive Response (CPR) which legalises the “no permit, no rally” PNP policy; PP 1017 which declared an emergency situation and was withdrawn because of strong public protest led by the people’s organization and the HROs; EO 464 which prevented civilian government and military elements from testifying in congressional and senate hearings; and the Anti-Terrorism Bill modeled after U.S. George Bush’s Patriot Act.

A most notorious case is that of the rebellion charge against six legislators and scores of others. One congressman is still detained and the five were for a few months under the protective custody of the Philippine Congress because of the threat of warrantless arrest. There are six other leaders of the democratic movement among the accused and an additional eight who were implicated.

Documentation and Reporting of HRVs.

From 2001, when Arroyo assumed the presidency, until 31 October 2006, there are a total of 782 victims of political killings of whom: 339 are human rights defenders who are members of various people’s organisations, 83 women, 58 minors, 390 peasants, 88 workers/urban poor, 41 church people, 74 from among the indigenous peoples. There are 186 victims of enforced disappearances 29 of whom are women and 41 are human rights defenders. There were 189 summarily executed in 2005 and 170 in the ten months of 2006.

The most basic but usually belittled of the tasks of an HRO is the documentation and reporting of cases of HRVs. The national centers cannot come up with complete, accurate and up-to-date HRV data unless the regional and provincial networks send equally complete, accurate and up-to-date fact sheets based on which national statistics are consolidated. Training workshops are held periodically to improve the documentation and reporting capability of HROs nationwide. A lexicon of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law was published to standardise HRV/IHLV documentation and reporting. We have also found it necessary to disaggregate the data to show violations against classes, sectors and gender.

An annual public presentation of the year-end HR report kicks off the week-long commemoration of the December 10 International HR Day. Those from the media, diplomatic corps, international HR organizations and church institutions are invited to the event.

In support of political prisoners (PPs)

The campaign to free PPs is at the core of the support that HROs provide PPs. Only with strong political pressure here and abroad can PPs be released and/or the court process speeded up to the benefit of the detainee. The campaign can take the form of: media expose, signature gathering, postcard sending, prison visitation and attendance in hearings especially by representatives of international support groups and national/regional personalities, assistance in PPs’ fasting or hunger strike, facilitating the filing of complaints by the victim and/or the family with the national and international HR institutions. The peace negotiation between the Philippine Government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines has also facilitated the release of PPs in the past. The thing to do is to make it too politically costly for the government to keep the PPs in detention.

Cases of torture, including rape and sexual molestation of women PPs, should be exposed and denounced to protect the PPs from further violence and to prevent such inhuman treatment from being committed with impunity on future PPs. As of November 20, 2006 there are a total of 248 PPs in detention centers nationwide. Fourteen (14) of them are women and 13 are minors. Eighty three percent (83%) of the PPs still in prison were arrested during Arroyo’s incumbency and many have been tortured and the women sexually molested or, in the least, harassed.

As soon as a person is reported as having been arrested or abducted, the HRO sends ASAP a quick reaction team to search for the missing person. When information is received that she/he is in a military camp, jail or detention unit, visit from a lawyer and family members is immediately facilitated. In the case of women PPs it is necessary to right away send in a doctor to deal with rape and/or other forms of sexual abuse.

Karapatan has also circulated a short guide, If You Were Arrested and/or Invited for an Investigation. It also contains a section on In cases of arrest, the duties of a paralegal are the following…”

Organising and education of HRVVs and their families.

The victims themselves have the will and capacity to fight for human rights. At the moment, the most active are Selda, Desaparecidos and Hustisya. Selda addresses the issues of freedom for PPs, illegal arrests, torture, justice and compensation for the HRVVs during martial law, food and prison conditions, and, recently, strip search of visitors in one detention center where most of the Moro detainees are incarcerated. Hustisya and Desaparecidos focus on the national and international campaigns to stop the killings and enforced disappearances. The former has successfully appealed to the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) for a 2nd Session on the Philippines. Selda and Desaparecidos are Hustisya’s co-complainant in the PPT to be held in the Hague in March 2007.

Alliance Building

The Movement of Concerned Citizens for Civil Liberties (MCCCL) along with the Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace (EMJP) will hold “A Celebration of Life, A Walk for Justice” on December 5 as their contribution to the week-long commemoration of the International Human Rights Day. This is an example of an alliance activity by alliance formations.

The activities are delegation to government officials, forums, roundtable discussions, pickets, walk for a cause, pin or ribbon wearing, umbrella carrying, special mass, interfaith activity, prayer rally, candle lighting, procession in communities and concerts. The more sectors of society and important personages join the human rights defenders and HRV victims and their families, the stronger the political pressure on the government, military and police to desist from further violations, render justice to the victims and break the culture of impunity.

Legislative Advocacy

In the Philippines, as in other countries, the law can be used against the powerless and penniless. Some laws which can benefit the people do not get implemented. And there are legislative bills needed that never get passed. After the party list system was instituted in the Philippines and a few people’s legislators gained seats in Congress, the HRDs turned more attention than before to legislative advocacy. The anti-rape bill which has been languishing in Congress was finally passed even if the final version has been diluted. Other bills which made it are the one against trafficking in persons and another addressing violence against women and children. But the bill granting compensation to the victims of HRVs during the Marcos dictatorship is still waiting approval after having been through two congresses.

Internationalising the campaign for human rights

As political killings and enforced disappearances intensified in 2005 and 2006, the Filipino activists and HRDs in other countries, foreign solidarity groups supporting the Philippine struggle and international HR organizations closed ranks in response to the campaign International Solidarity to Stop the Killings in the Philippines initiated by Karapatan.

The International Solidarity Mission (ISM) and International People’s Tribunal (IPT) in August 2005 focused on five regions where the grossest violations of human rights occurred. They were followed by international fact finding and solidarity missions, coming one after another. All of them confirmed the alarming situation of political killings. They demanded a stop to the killings and called on the Arroyo government to punish the perpetrators and ensure that justice is done.

Lobbying at the United Nations

The Filipino HRDs have brought their case to the U.N. In March 2005 in New York, the Secretary General of Karapatan and its legal counsel filed cases with the UN HR Commission. They also submitted an alternative Philippine HR Report. The case of Congressman Crispin Beltran was submitted to the UN Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary Arrests.

A group of six activists/HRDs went to Geneva last September-October 2006. Among their activities were oral intervention in a UN SR session, talks with five UN Special Rapporteurs and Representatives and networking with international HR organizations.

Next year, a delegation will again go to Geneva in March. Also, efforts are being exerted to get some of the UN Special Rapporteurs to visit the Philippines, aside from the UNSR on IP Rights, who got the ire of the Arroyo government because of the report he wrote on his last visit in the Philippines. Hopefully the UN Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders and the UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Execution can visit Manila in 2007.

The Filipino human rights defenders address other issues and work for fundamental change in society. They are also activists of the people’s movement. They have learned that it is not just an issue of human rights but of fighting for national sovereignty, protecting the nation‘s patrimony and gaining genuine democracy. Human and people’s rights can never be respected in a situation of servitude to imperialist powers and MNCs, and with resources, wealth and power monopolized by the local elite and bureaucrats. Unless basic changes are achieved in Philippine society to the benefit of the majority of the people, human rights and civil liberties will always be trampled upon.