In Paper to UN Rights Council, Germans Decry Abuses

Torture

Torture in police custody is often experienced. The human rights NGO TFDP documented 95 cases of torture with 201 victims between January 1st 2001 and August 1st 2005. Amnesty International reports widespread use of harassments, beatings, sexual abuse and torture in custody in their 2003 report “Philippines: Torture Persists: Appearance and Reality within the Criminal Justice System” (AI Index: ASA 35/001/2003). While formally prohibited by law, torture during interrogation is not prevented, due to a lack of official investigation of allegations and cases of torture and due to weak institutional control mechanisms. There is great concern that the new Human Security Act will provide a legal backdrop to torture in custody, as it allows for unwarranted arrest for up to three days.

Violence against women

In January 2004, the Philippine Congress enacted legislation criminalizing acts of violence against women and their children within intimate relationships (Anti-Domestic Violence against Women and their Children Act, 2004). Despite this achievement, incidents of domestic violence remain endemic. On average, six out of ten women from poor communities experience domestic violence. Prostitution and human trafficking have also increased. Police, instead of protecting the victims, respond with raids, where they primarily arrest the prostitutes – not the traffickers and other criminals. Once in custody, the women are in danger of being victimised again by being raped and tortured. The lower their social status, the more likely the women are to suffer from such human rights violations. (for details see, for example: Amnesty International report “Philippines: Fear, shame and Impunity: Rape and Sexual Abuse of Women in Custody” (AI Index: ASA 35/001/2001). There are reports of widespread use of harassments, beatings, sexual abuse and rape of prisoners, in particular women, in custody. While formally protected by the law, a lack of official investigation and weak institutional control mechanisms fail to prevent torture during interrogation.

Women’s groups in the Philippines continue to campaign for the effective implementation of the above mentioned anti-domestic-violence legislation through adequately financed government monitoring programmes and training. One of these groups is the “Legal Alternatives for Women Center, Inc.”, based in Cebu City. Doing this work, Law Inc. members risk their life. One of their woman lawyers, Atty. Arbeit Sta. Ana-Yongco, was killed in the morning of 11 October 2004 inside her law office, situated in her own residence. She was shot at close range by a gunman: two shots into the neck, two shots into her right cheek. The killing looked like an execution. The perpetrator went unpunished. The case was never fully investigated.

Investment Policies

Human rights violations are also connected to foreign direct investments and private national investments. Workers rights within export-processing or special industrial zones are often violated and local small-scale farmers get expelled from the territory of such zones without compensation. Agricultural lands owned by the land-owning elite are often considered fenced-in patches of impunity: On entering the hacienda, national law becomes secondary to the landowner’s hacienda law. The implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) has hence met with the violent resistance of large-scale landowners, such as Victor Reyes, Michael Matias or Allan Uy. Human rights abuses in the land reform area particularly Negros island, but also in other parts of the Philippines, such as Bondoc Peninsula, include harassments, murder and deceptive legal cases filed against harvesting peasants by large-scale landowners hindering the implementation of landreform legislation, as documented by NGOs such as the
PEACE Foundation or Partnership for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development Services (PARRDS).

Particularly regarding the mining sector there is great cause for concern regarding the effects of foreign direct investments into mining projects in culturally or environmentally volatile areas. Since the presidency of Arroyo, progressive human rights legislation such as the Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA) or CARL has been overruled in favour of foreign direct investments and individual interests. Multiple human rights abuses have for example been documented connected to the operations of the Canadian mining company TVI Pacific in Canatuan, Zamboanga del Norte. Whereas IPRA gives indigenous peoples a certain degree of autonomy for their lands, and asks for their prior and informed consent, e.g. to mining operations there, a Supreme Court Ruling of 1 December 2004 contravenes this progressive legislation. It gives business interests priority over indigenous rights, if such business interests are declared to be “in the national interest”. Together with an executive order (EO 270) that promotes mining all over the Philippines, the consequences for the human rights of indigenous peoples – on whose land the majority of mining operations are – are disastrous.