World lawyers slam Arroyo’s dismal HR record

An international group of lawyers, judges, jurists and law students has criticized the Arroyo government for its alleged refusal to seriously investigate human rights abuses and to prosecute State security forces widely perceived to be behind these abuses.

A resolution unanimously adopted in the recently concluded 17th Congress of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) in Vietnam denounced the attacks on lawyers and judges in the Philippines. The resolution also urged the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Lawyers and Judges to investigate the attacks.

The IADL noted that more than a thousand people have already fallen victims to extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other violations reportedly perpetrated by state security forces in response to the growing protest and resistance movement against President Arroyo for graft and corruption, electoral fraud, human-rights violations and foreign subservience. More than 40 lawyers and judges have also been killed.

Founded in 1947, the IADL is a worldwide association of human-rights lawyers from 100 countries and has consultative status with the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. A Philippine Web site known for its populist advocacies, www.bulatlat.com, published a more detailed story on the recent lawyers’ congress in Hanoi.

Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Neri Colmenares led the Philippines’ nine-man delegation to the Hanoi Congress last week.

Colmenares told the lawyers’ Congress about a long list of extra-judicial killings and enforced

disappearances of lawyers, judges, activists and known opposition figures in the Philippines. He even cited the issuance of a Power-Point presentation by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, which listed four known human-rights lawyers in its “order of battle” and the filing of trumped-up charges against labor lawyer Remigio Saladero Jr. and other leaders of people’s organizations.

The IADL has called for a stop to the “undemocratic, persecutory and repressive labeling of human rights defenders, political activists, and the liberation movement in the Philippines as enemies of the state or terrorists.”

It also noted the “persistent intervention” of the United States government and the deployment of its troops in the Philippines “to aid a repressive regime,” saying that such intervention served as a hindrance to achieving a just and lasting peace in the country and in resolving the roots of the armed conflict.

Also at the IADL’s 17th Congress, Belgian lawyer Jo Dereymaeker of the Progress Lawyers Network Belgium presented a report of the International Verification and Fact Finding Mission (IVFFM) on the Philippines. Dereymaeker was part of the eight-member IVFFM organized by the Dutch Lawyers for Lawyers Foundation in the Philippines in November 2008.

The mission found that lawyers and judges in the Philippines are still threatened, intimidated and killed; these atrocities prevent them from carrying out their legal profession. And in its June 4, 2009 final report entitled “The Measures Measured,” the IVFFM recommended that the Philippine government consistently condemn all forms of attacks against lawyers and judges publicly and the prosecution of all perpetrators.

The IVFFM said it was also concerned about the filing of fabricated charges against lawyers and activists by government prosecutors and other forms of harassment that undermine the rule of law in the Philippines.

The IVFFM called on the Arroyo government to address effectively the underlying causes of the extrajudicial killings and to leave no stone unturned in investigating the serious allegations that its own military forces are involved in the killings.

Representatives from Austria, Belgium, Cuba, France, Haiti,, Hungary, India, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Pakistan, Puerto Rico,Romania, Spain, United Sates of America, United Kingdom, Vietnam were also elected to the bureau. Newly elected members of the bureau met with Vietnamese president Nguyen Minh Triet. –Daily Tribune