Bicameral committee approves anti-torture bill

A House-Senate conference committee on Monday reconciled after just one meeting the conflicting provisions of their versions of the proposed Anti-Torture Law, the missing link in Philippine observance of human rights.

Sen. Francis Escudero, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights, said that the measure would give teeth to implementation of treaties and international agreements on human rights that the Philippines has ratified.

The reconciliation of the two versions coincided with the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) announcing that it was adopting interrogation techniques used on former Iraq President Saddam Hussein.

Lawyer Reynaldo Esmeralda, the bureau’s Deputy Director for Technical Services who recently attended a retraining session in Australia, said that such techniques did not use physical torture on Hussein, only a “psychological approach.”

Esmeralda added that the interrogation techniques employed by Agent George Piro of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on the former Iraqi dictator would be useful in interrogating captured Abu Sayyaf members and other militants.

“Physical torture, which is illegal, would not work on Hussein or even on Abu Sayyaf terrorists and other hardened criminals. So Agent Piro came out with something [for him to be able] to deal with Hussein, he used a psychological approach,” he said.

In hailing the breakthrough made by the bicameral committee, Escudero said, “The absence of an Anti-Torture Law is one of the issues raised by the Alston Report on the status of human rights in the Philippines.” He was referring to the United Nations document of last year that criticized alleged inaction of the Philippine government on rights abuses.

All in agreement

The senator said that there were no contentious issues during the bicameral meeting at the Senate, enabling them to come up with a reconciled version after just four hours of going over the differing provisions of the House and Senate’s anti-torture bills.

He stressed that even civilians who will illegally detain others and then torture them would be meted the supreme penalty for the crime, just like men of authority. He pointed to the coverage of non-state violators as the only issue where the House and the Senate spent a lot of time debating. They all agreed that even civilians committing torture should also be covered by the law.

“Hopefully, the law will result in the lesser incidence of torture and strike fear in the minds of those planning to commit it,” Escudero said.

He pointed out that the proposed law would also punish superior officers of men who commit torture under the principle of command responsibility.

“The superior officer will be liable as if he was the one who actually committed the torture,” Escudero explained.

He said that the other highlights of the bicameral report are the increase in the budget of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and the ban on secret detention places.

“The increase in the budget of CHR is needed for the hiring of more men to implement the Anti-Torture Law,” Escudero added.

He said that for 2009, the increase would only be P5 million because the year was more than half-through. The budget increase for 2010 will be discussed in the deliberations on the general appropriations bill.

Escudero pointed to the banning of secret detention places as a novel provision of the measure. He said that safehouses for witnesses under the Witness Protection Program are not included in the ban.

“This refers to those places not included in the list given to the CHR,” he said.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson supported the ban on maintaining secret detention places.

“Safehouses could be used for operation but not for the detention of suspects. Torture is usually done in those places so they should be banned,” he said. — Efren L. Danao, Senior Reporter with Report from Ruben D. Manahan 4th, Manila Times