Military continues to practice rights abuses, says CHR

Government security forces still commit human rights violations as the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) continues to record cases of extra-judicial killings, torture, enforced disappearance and harassment against military and police.

CHR Chairman Loretta “Etta” Rosales belied claims by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that there was not a single human rights violation committed by the 125,000 strong military during the first four months of the year.

“That is not true… how can they claim that, they already retracted that… I got mad at them… they should not be saying that,” said Rosales, who, ironically, was one of the guests during yesterday’s ceremonies reaffirming AFP’s commitment to International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in Camp Aguinaldo.

In a press release issued last May, the AFP claimed there was zero human rights violations recorded against the military during the first four months of 2012.

The AFP, in its press release, stated that its “intensified efforts to educate and train its soldiers on the protection of human rights and adherence to the IHL and rule of law continue to pay off with zero human rights violation (HRV) recorded for the first four months of 2012.”

It added “the AFP Human Rights Office has been tasked to verify HRV reports involving military personnel that were referred to the CHR. To address these circumstances, the AFP-HRO created a Board of Inquiry (BoI) which was also replicated down to the battalion levels to conduct investigations that would validate the reports of the CHR.”

The findings of the BoI, the AFP said, revealed that all of the referred HRV cases tagging military personnel were only accusation and did not produce sufficient evidence against the soldiers.

“Excuse me, I don’t think so… they should not be saying that they don’t have human rights (violations) maybe they have not studied the meaning of human rights,” Rosales noted.

She, however, did not state how many human rights violations were attributed to the AFP during the first quarter of 2012.

According to Rosales, the CHR has recorded 96 human rights complaints against the military while 235 on the police since President Aquino assumed office in June 2010.

“These are complaints, these have to be validated,” said Rosales.

“They range from extra-judicial killings, torture, enforced disappearance, harassment, among others. We have to find out if some of them are legitimate, we have to validate,” she added.
Rosales, however, admitted that there is an improvement on the part of the AFP with regard to human rights issues.

On the other hand, the CHR chief said at least 77 human rights cases are blamed to anti-government forces, largely to the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) with the use of landmines and other improvised explosive devices. –Mario J. Mallari, Daily Tribune