Use P25-M ‘reward’ to boost justice system instead, CHR urges Palace

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) yesterday asked Malacañang to instead use the proposed P25-million informants’ reward for the improvement of the country’s law enforcement, judicial system and witness protection program to end extra-judicial killings.

CHR Chairman Leila De Lima said this as she sought to remind the government that human rights witnesses are not merely motivated by money but justice.

She said witnesses do not cooperate and give information because of fear of retaliation, distrust and slow justice system.

“(The) best thing for government to do is to enjoin the police and the Department of Justice to resolve and prosecute cases of extra-judicial killings. The proposed P25 million reward can very well apply to operations, supplement more funds for prosecutors, hire additional lawyers and paralegals, and more importantly, strengthen the witness protection program,” De Lima said.

President Arroyo announced on Monday that she was setting aside a multi-million fund that would be used to reward informants on political killings and assassination cases to help solve these cases. To help build the fund, she called on lawmakers to contribute P250,000 each from their congressional funds or “pork barrel.”

Mrs. Arroyo touted the idea as a move that could wipe away the “legacy of political violence” in the country.

Since 2001, hundreds of activists, trade unionists, journalists and religious leaders in the Philippines have been killed or abducted. The government, however, has been rejecting accusations that its security forces – the military and police – were involved in these political killings even after a UN fact-finding mission to the Philippines in 2007 led by Special Rapporteur Philip Alston showed evidence to support such allegation.

After conducting interviews with relatives of the victims and concerned groups in the country, Alston issued out a report that pointed to the military as being the perpetrators of a lot of the killings and disappearances of left-leaning activists.

The government, however, disputed his findings, saying it did not reflect the true conditions in the country.

“I am ordinarily cold to ideas of financial incentives when it comes to addressing human rights violations. I must stress that human rights cases are different from corruption cases or ordinary crimes,” De Lima said.

She, though, said the fund could be “useful” if it will be utilized to upgrade the capability of the country’s law enforcement agencies to investigate such cases.

She said the CHR, the prime human rights body in the country, should also be entitled to supplemental funds, such as the extra-judicial killings fund allotted in 2007 to help resolve the slays.

De Lima said this was the previous recommendations of Alston and the Melo Commission, a government panel set up in 2006 to look into cases of political killings in the country.

She asserted that the resolution of such cases, especially the high profile ones, “entail serious intelligence work” as she called for the enhancement of investigative skills and forensic capacity of CHR investigators.

Last week, De Lima told the United Nations Committee Against Torture during its review on the status of human rights in the Philippines in Geneva, Switzerland, that while conducting an assessment of the human rights situation there, particularly for prisoners, there were instances when her agency was denied by authorities access to detention facilities, such as military camps. –Michaela P. del Callar, Daily Tribune