Philippines-Canada Task Force on Human Rights
Press Statement

Canadians appalled by Philippine Ambassador’s statements

April 17, 2008

The Philippines-Canada Task Force on Human Rights is appalled by the outright lies of Jose Brillantes, Philippine Ambassador to Canada in a radio interview yesterday.

 Following an interview with visiting solons Rep. Satur Ocampo and Rep. Luz Ilagan from the Philippines on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Brillantes tried to dispute the concerns raised by the Philippine congress representatives about the spate of political extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances and other human rights violations in the Philippines.

 “The Philippine government acknowledges the killings are happening,” said Brillantes. “The numbers are off by a certain percentage.” Citing the investigations of the government-initiated Task Force Usig and the Melo Commissions, Brillantes also said the investigations are being ‘hampered by a lack of specifics.” He also said when asked that “not more than ten of the alleged killings can be attributed directly to military personnel” and that government investigations have shown “perpetrators were from the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF),” which he described as “ultra-rightist elements.”

 The human rights alliance Karapatan, along with Amnesty International and other international bodies have raised concerns over the government responsibility in the many political killings and human rights violations. It is the common line of the government to lay the blame on the revolutionary movement when in fact it is clear from Philippine military documents that members of legal progressive organizations along with the revolutionary forces are being targeted under the military’s counter-insurgency Oplan Bantay Laya (Operation Freedom Watch).

 Ambassador Brillantes should do more research into the well-documented human rights violations in the Philippines. According to Karapatan, since 2001 there have been 889 extra-judicial killings, 200 cases of enforced disappearances and over one million people displaced. These findings have also been documented by the Joint Monitoring Committee of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, formed under the mutually signed Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).

 Members of the PCTFHR themselves witnessed the rampant abuses of human rights violations and experienced the direct surveillance and harassment of the Philippine military while on their fact-finding mission to the Philippines in November 2006. A team of the mission was detained for several hours and questioned by elements of the 74th Infantry Battalion (IB) of the Philippine Army in San Narciso, Quezon Province, south of Manila while on the mission.

 Mr. Brillantes’ lack of knowledge and understanding of the situation in the Philippines was also confirmed when he was directly confronted by members of the PCTFHR during a community forum in Vancouver in December 2007. After giving a glowing picture of the Philippine economy and asking Filipinos in Canada to continue sending remittances back home and encouraging our relatives to migrate, he said that he did not have a position on the state of human rights violations in the Philippines.

 When Luningning Alcuitas-Imperial, Western Coordinator for the PCTFHR cited the numbers of human rights violations and the findings of the report of Philip Alston, the UN Special Rappoteur on extra-judicial killings which found the Arroyo government culpable for human rights violations and asked Brillantes for his position, he replied, “I don’t know,” and said he would have to look it up.

 As the representative of the Arroyo government in Canada, we as Canadians are disappointed, yet not surprised by Ambassador Brillantes’ comments. His spins are not unlike the lies of Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita in his presentation recently to the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Universal Periodic Review on the Philippines in Geneva Switzerland. Ambassador Brillantes, like Ermita, called the Philippines a “vibrant democracy.”

 As Canadian citizens, we question this definition as well as the Canadian government’s claim that the Philippines is a “functioning democracy.” We decry the use of our taxpayers’ money to support the fascist government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

 We demand that Canadian bilateral aid to the Philippines should instead be directed to organizations that are legitimately working for genuine human rights.  We vow to continue to strengthen genuine stronger people-to-people solidarity with the Filipino people in their struggle for a just and lasting peace.  We call on all Canadians to educate themselves about the root causes of the human rights violations in the Philippines and work concretely in solidarity campaigns to expose Canada’s complicity in these human rights violations.
 Statement issued: April 17, 2008

.

--