By JOEL SIMON and SHEILA CORONEL | Committee to Protect Journalists | The nearly perfect record of impunity in the Philippines has had a devastating impact on the free flow of information and has inhibited coverage of human rights and corruption issues in the communities affected by violence.

Among the recommendations put forth at the UNHRC’s review of human rights in the Philippines is the intensification of efforts to investigate, prosecute and punish the perpetrators of extrajudicial killings.

gmanews.tv: A newspaper columnist was gunned down Monday night, making him the latest casualty of attacks against journalists in the country.

The chairman of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines
(NDFP) Human Rights Monitoring Committee Fidel V. Agcaoili today
expressed outrage over the appointment of Executive Secretary Eduardo
Ermita as head of the GRP 44-team delegation to the United Nations
Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on April
11.
Agcaoili said that Ermita’s record as the US pointguard and [...]

Report on Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances in the Philippines
Fact Finding Mission of Human Rights Now to Philippines
Human Rights Now
April 2008
Summary
In the Philippines, hundreds of social activists and human rights defenders have been unlawfully killed as well as subjected to enforced disappearances since [...]

44 delegates is ‘too much’

About 44 government officials will be sent by the Arroyo government to Geneva when the Universal Periodic Review on the Philippines will be conducted by the UN Human Rights Council on April 11, 2008. This was the information gathered by the Philippine UPR Watch, a coalition of non-governmental organizations monitoring [...]

Committee to Protect Journalists
330 7th Avenue, 11th Fl., New York, NY 10001 USA Phone: (212) 465‑1004 Fax: (212) 465‑9568 Web: www.cpj.org E-Mail: info@cpj.org
March 28, 2008
The Honorable Reynato Puno
Chief Justice, Supreme Court of the Philippines
Manila, Philippines
Via facsimile: +63-2-526-8129
Dear Chief Justice [...]

The umbrella group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan today slammed the Arroyo government’s inaction and failure to prosecute top military officials believed to be involved in the extrajudicial killings of activists. This happens a day after the international group Human Rights Watch called the efforts of the Arroyo government as mere “window-dressing”.
The Philippines is among the first [...]

From March 18 to 22, seven alleged criminals were killed, including a
16-year-old boy, in separate shooting incidents reportedly perpetrated
by men riding on motorcycles in General Santos City. The police and
the city’s mayor quickly announced that the killings could have been
the result of a conflict within the group of criminals themselves
given that they all have criminal [...]

The Cebu City Court of Appeals issued a 60-day temporary restraining order (TRO) on 25 March 2008 in the trial of the suspected masterminds in the killing of a journalist. Cebu is a province approximately 562 km south of Manila.
A three-page resolution penned by Associate Jusitce Francisco Acosta and co-signed by Associate Justices Pampio [...]

The first Universal Periodic Review of the Philippines at the UN Human Rights Council takes place on April 11.

CMFR/Philippines—Two government officials suspected to be the brains behind the killing of a journalist in 2004 have eluded arrest despite three week-old warrants for their arrest.
Cebu City Regional Trial Court Branch 7 Judge Simeon Dumdum issued arrest warrants to the Cotabato City police on 4 February 2008 for the arrest of Estrella Sabay and Osmeña [...]

“Leftists and political activists are not the only targets of the Arroyo regime’s political repression. Even former allies and those who served its administration have become targets of political repression.” This was the statement made by the human right alliance Karapatan as it joined the rally for good government today in Ayala [...]

As we tremble at the thought that the President and Commander-In-Chief doesn’t have any compunction in violating human rights - as evidenced by the police’s abduction yesterday at the airport of a rich and known personality like Mr. Rodolfo Lozada, Jr., star witness to the anomalous ZTE deal — we are enraged at the systematic, [...]

MANILA — Philippine Press Secretary and Presidential Spokesman Ignacio R. Bunye decried today unfounded surveys purporting to show the decline of democracy in the Philippines, saying Filipinos know best that democracy lives and reigns in the country.
Bunye was reacting to the survey released by New York-based Freedom House which downgraded the Philippines from a free [...]

In December 2007, a bishop and three priests of the Iglesia Filipina
Independiente (Philippine Independent Church or PIC) once again have
been threatened that they will be killed and have been the subjects
of overt surveillance. They were warned about undertaking their
social activities and ministry, or they would be murdered like their
colleagues. Within a short period, Bishop Delfin [...]

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today said that violence against journalists in 2007 has reached extreme levels for the third year in succession with 171 confirmed deaths, just below the record set a year ago.
Conflicts in Iraq, Pakistan and Somalia have proved the most dangerous for journalists in a year that has confirmed the [...]