‘Arbitrary killing’ of PH activists appalls UN body. Inquirer Newsletter. March 11, 2021.

No images? Click here   BLOODY RAID  Imelda Evangelista, 55, on Wednesday points to the spot where her son, Ariel Evangelista, and his wife, Chai Lemita-Evangelista, were shot dead by police officers in Barangay Calayo, Nasugbu, Batangas. The Evangelista couple was among the nine activists killed in simultaneous police-military raids in the Southern Luzon region on Sunday. —GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE     News WHO: AstraZeneca shots here by May The global vaccine pool COVAX has committed to deliver to the Philippines up to 4.58 million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine by May, Rabindra Abeyasinghe, the World Health Organization (WHO) representative to the country, said on Wednesday. In addition, the country will get 117,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine from the pool, he said. Health workers will get the vaccines first.  —STORY BY CATHRINE GONZALES AND JEROME ANING Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net   Regions Domestic travel now easier–DILG Between 80 and 90 percent of local governments across the country have been complying with the uniform measures that relaxed the rules on domestic travel amid the pandemic, Interior Undersecretary Epimaco Densing III said. In a House hearing on Wednesday, he said the new regulations were “science-based” and that observing minimum health standards was still key to reducing coronavirus transmission. —STORY BY JULIE M. AURELIO Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net/regions   Newsletter / Join us Has this been forwarded by a friend? Subscribe now to the Philippine Daily Inquirer Newsletter and get your latest news and important updates on COVID-19. Subscribe     Subscribe   Banner Story ‘Arbitrary killing’ of PH activists appalls UN body By Jhesset O. Enano The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has expressed shock and horror at the recent killings of activists in Southern Luzon and an international human rights watchdog on Wednesday urged the UN body to immediately send a “rapid response unit” to investigate their deaths at the hands of security forces. “We are appalled by the apparently arbitrary killing of nine activists in simultaneous police-military operations in Batangas, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal provinces surrounding Metro Manila in the Philippines in the early hours of Sunday morning,” OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said in a statement on Tuesday. “We are deeply worried that these latest killings indicate an escalation in violence, intimidation, harassment and ‘Red-tagging’ of human rights defenders,” she said. “Red-tagging” is the labeling of opponents as communists or terrorists to justify targeting them. The government’s commitment to investigate these cases, Shamdasani  said, will be a “critical test” for the domestic mechanisms that the Duterte administration said it had established for such cases. Shamdasani said an investigation must be “conducted with a view to accountability.” “The fact remains that most of the perpetrators of these human rights violations are enjoying impunity to this day,” she said. The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday said the killings show the need for an independent and international inquiry into rights violations in the country. “The Southern Luzon raids were apparent politically motivated killings that the police and military have sought to justify with unconvincing justifications that echo ‘drug war’ claims,” said Phil Robertson, HRW Asia deputy director. “The Philippine government’s ‘dirty war’ against political activists needs to stop.” He said concerned governments should support “international action” to hold the Duterte government to account for “grave human rights violations.” HRW said the UN human rights office was mandated to deploy a rapid response unit to respond to humanitarian and human rights crises around the world. According to the OHCHR,  a rapid response unit provides support to UN Human Rights field offices, which conduct fact-finding missions and inquiries into allegations of human rights abuses. In recent times, the unit has coordinated missions in Myanmar, Congo and South Sudan, where human rights abuses had been reported. Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque declined to comment on the OHCHR statement, saying only that an “investigation is ongoing.” Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said the OHCHR and other groups should have “sufficient information before making a judgment.” ‘Hasty opinions’ “We understand the concern of the UN-OHCHR. That is why the DOJ (Department of Justice) has ordered a thorough investigation of the incidents,” Guevarra told the Inquirer on Wednesday. The Philippine Mission to the UN in Geneva, however, scored the UN human rights body, saying it was uninformed. “We are appalled at OHCHR prejudging legitimate police operations on Sunday in the Philippines vs persons possessing dangerous firearms and explosive devices. We regret this overreach of OHCHR’s mandate—clearly uninformed of facts on the ground,” it said in a Twitter post on Tuesday. It said it would ask the OHCHR to correct “hasty opinions favoring violators of the law & instead support efforts to uphold law & order.” The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) on Wednesday called for greater transparency from government investigations of such killings. Du30 encouragement CHR Commissioner Gwen Pimentel Gana said access to police records remained a “recurring obstacle” in the commission’s investigations, making it difficult to ascertain the veracity of police claims and the extent of the effort extended in investigating deaths. “Findings from different cases being covered by CHR regional offices point to a more pressing conclusion—that access to justice remains to be a challenge as truth remains elusive,” she said. Rights groups have accused Mr. Duterte of encouraging a crackdown on activists to silence dissent and target his detractors, under the guise of intensified counterinsurgency operations against communist rebels. They said the weekend raids were reminiscent of thousands of deadly police operations under the bloody antidrug crackdown, in which police said all of the victims were armed and had resisted arrest. Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman on Wednesday criticized the President’s “apologists” for “vainly justifying his perilous statement” of ordering the killing of communist rebels. “Mr. Duterte’s deadly order resulted in the separate but simultaneous extrajudicial killing of nine crusading activists in Calabarzon who were not even combatants,” Lagman said in a statement. He was reacting particularly to Sen. Ronald dela Rosa’s defense of the President’s remarks as mere “hyperbole.” “There is no place for disastrous ‘hyperbole’ when the people’s human rights and civil liberties are at stake,” Lagman said. “Until now, Duterte has neither recanted nor tempered his lethal instruction which may escalate nationwide.” Bayan Muna Rep. Ferdinand Gaite said the authorities’ claims that the slain activists tried to fight back and resist arrest were “fraught with doubt.” “We are still in shock and are enraged by the Bloody Sunday in Southern Tagalog. We condemn these heartless summary executions masquerading as legitimate police operations. It is very clear that it was a bloody crackdown against progressives,” Gaite said. —WITH REPORTS FROM MARLON RAMOS, TINA G. SANTOS, JEROME ANING, JULIE M. AURELIO AND REUTERS   Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net   Editorial Unending bloodbath Less than 48 hours after President Duterte issued a direct order for the police and military to 'forget about human rights' and just go ahead and 'kill' armed communist insurgents, simultaneous pre-dawn joint operations were conducted on March 7 in Calabarzon, leaving nine activists dead and six arrested. At about the same time that the massacre was mercilessly transpiring in Calabarzon, Sinas and fellow police officials were shown in pictures attending Mass and deep in prayer at the Manila Cathedral. To them, and to the administration responsible for the unending bloodbath rampaging across the country and brutalizing its most vulnerable citizens, should have been directed the thunderbolt words of El Salvador archbishop Oscar Romero a day before he was assassinated in 1980 as he denounced the violence in his own country: 'In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to Heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!' Read full story: opinion.inquirer.net   Copyright © 2020 PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: P.O. Box 2353, Makati Central Post Office, 1263 Makati City, Philippines.   Share    Tweet    Share    Forward  Preferences  |  Unsubscribe