UN rights body urged to launch probe mechanism on alleged abuses in Philippines

Over 60 civil society organizations on Thursday appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to immediately launch an independent investigation mechanism on alleged human rights abuses in the Philippines under the Duterte administration.

In a letter dated August 27, 2020, the 62 local and international groups urged the UNHRC "to actively work towards the adoption of a resolution establishing an independent international investigative mechanism on extrajudicial executions and other human rights violations committed in the Philippines since 2016, with a view to contributing to accountability."

The groups, in the letter, expressed their "grave concern" over the alleged extrajudicial executions and human rights abuses being committed in the government's intensified campaign against illegal drugs.

According to them, the human rights situation in the Philippines "has undergone a dramatic decline" since President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office in 2016.

"Extrajudicial executions committed in the context of the "war on drugs" continue to take place with total impunity," they said in the letter addressed to the UNHRC.

In July last year, the UNHRC voted to set up an investigation into the thousands of killings — which officially stands at about 6,000 but critics said could be as many as 27,000 — in Duterte's war on drugs.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' report on the Philippines, which was published on June 4, 2020, said at least 8,663 were killed in the anti-drug campaign. It also said the killings were "widespread and systematic."

"As noted in the High Commissioner's report, persistent impunity for human rights violations is stark and the practical obstacles to accessing justice within the country are almost insurmountable," the groups said in their letter.

Families of the victims, they added, found themselves helpless in describing their inability to obtain justice for their slain loved ones" as they cited "the enormous obstacles to filing cases, the continued difficulty of obtaining police or autopsy reports, and the immense fear of retaliation they experience."

"The climate of total impunity leaves police and other unidentified gunmen, widely believed to be associated with law enforcement agencies, able to commit further extrajudicial executions without consequence," the group said.

Amid international scrutiny, the Duterte administration has created an inter-agency panel, chaired by the Department of Justice, that will review thousands of police anti-illegal drug operations that resulted in deaths.

The panel is conducting a "judicious review" of 5,655 police operations related to the drug war, Philippine Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra told the UNHRC in June.

In his address to the UN body, Guevarra said claims of impunity in the Philippines "find no anchor in a system that provides every avenue to examine, establish and pursue a claim of wrongdoing by a state actor, if such claim is substantiated with facts."

Malacañang, meanwhile, has repeatedly defended the government's war on drugs. —KBK, GMA News