International delegates attending the counter event to the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) staged a protest picket on December 1 at the Philippine Mission in Geneva, Switzerland, on the continuing human rights violations in the Philippines. They handed over to Ambassador Evan Garcia, the head of the Philippine Mission, an open letter addressed to Philippine president Benigno Aquino III.
The counter event to the GFMD was organized by the International Migrants Alliance-Europe Section (IMA-Europe).
The delegation came from Germany, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Nigeria, Switzerland and the Philippines and were headed by IMA-Europe coordinator Grace Punongbayan and Rev. Cesar Taguba of the International Coordinating Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICCHRP).
The open letter addressed to President Aquino reads in part: “Your government is now going into its one and a half years in office but not a single perpetrator of human rights violations during the time of Arroyo has been punished. In fact, under your administration, the human rights organization KARAPATAN has already recorded the following violations in its June-September 2011 report: 55 extrajudicial killings, 8 enforced disappearances, 41 cases of torture, 151 illegal arrests and 4,224 victims of forcible evacuation from rural villages.
“Only recently, an Italian priest, Fr. Pops Tenorio, was killed for supporting the struggle of indigenous people in Mindanao against mining operations that were destroying their ancestral lands.
“These human rights violations are the direct result of your counter-insurgency program Oplan Bayanihan that replaced Arroyo’s infamous Oplan Bantay Laya.”
The members of the delegation made known to the Philippine Mission their deep concern on the impunity and continuing violations of human rights despite the change of administration in the Philippines from Arroyo to Aquino.
A representative of the German-Filipino Friendship Association (GFFA) told Ambassador Garcia that for several years now they have been campaigning for the resurfacing of James Balao, a victim of enforced disappearance. He expressed indignation that their letters to Philippine government agencies were never answered.
Responding to the remark of Ambassador Garcia that the Philippine government is looking into the allegations of human rights violations, the representative from IBON-Europe stressed that the families of the victims and the victims themselves have suffered and waited long enough and they could not wait any longer.
The delegates from Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia pointed to the Philippine ambassador their deep concern that the situation in the Philippines today is similar to the time of the military dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s and 80s where the security forces carried out summary executions and enforced disappearances against political activists, trade unionists and other oppositionists. They expressed solidarity with the Filipino people in their quest for justice.#
For Reference:
Rev. Cesar T. Taguba - MIGRANTE International Europe