Rights group welcomes
US Senate's precondition to RP aid
A Press Statement by
KARAPATAN
November 6, 2007
We welcome the US
Senate's decision to impose human rights-related conditions for the
additional military aid to the Arroyo government. We have been urging
the US Senate to rethink giving aid to the Philippine government given
its failure to address extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances
and other forms of human rights violations.
The Arroyo regime and
its state security forces continue to violate the rights of its
people. To this day, cases of abduction and harassment of human rights
defenders persist. Recently, two of our colleagues at the national
office experienced harassment through a texted death threat to one and
to another, being photographed by men riding on a motorcycle without a
license plate, while on board a public jeepney. This incident not only
shows blatant disregard to the rights of the people but is a more
telling evidence of the blatant lie that the Philippine government has
been saying to the US Senate that this administration doesn't tolerate
rights violations.
The Philippine
government must be made to also put a stop to the implementation of
Oplan Bantay Laya II, a counter-insurgency program that is behind the
continuing attacks against activists and critics of the Arroyo
government.
We would like to
caution the US Senate that it must thoroughly look into the alleged
measures the government has been putting in place to stop the killings
and other rights violations. It is not enough that rhetorics to this
effect must be the yardstick to determine that the human rights
situation has changed, but as Prof. Alston correctly pointed out in
his statement to the 3rd committee of the UN General Assembly, "The
bottom line is that only the elimination of such killings and the
ending of the impunity enjoyed to date, by the Armed Forces of the
Philippines in particular, will signal that the situation has turned
the corner."
