Davao’s “Summary Killings”: Probe by CHR in 2009, UN rep Alston in 2007

The two-day probe of the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights this week on the “summary executions” in Davao City in Mindanao reminds me of the investigations by Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions in 2007.

The inquiries is making waves about the killings not only in Mindanao’s premier city but also around the Philippines.

For Alston, Mayor Rodrigo Duterte “dominates the city so thoroughly as to stamp out whole genres of crime, yet he remains powerless in the face of hundreds of murders committed by men without masks in view of witnesses.”

But Duterte said Alston’s 66-page final report on his Philippine mission in February, two pages of which are on his visit to this city, was written by someone who “does not have training to be impartial” and who has made a very short visit to Davao for him to end up with those conclusions.

For a review of the news report then, See this post.

CHR probes Davao’s “Summary Killings”

The hearing being held by the Commission on Human Rights on the alleged summary executions in Davao City reached boiling point when Mayor Rodrigo Duterte was subjected to questioning by CHR chair Leila de Lima.

Read this report by MindaNews’ Carolyn Arguillas.

Both the interrogator and the one interrogated stood firm, as it appears.

We hope this will produce results.

On Chip Tsao’s “The War at Home”

The employer-employee relationship between HK Chinese nationals and Filipino contract workers is a field that pokes always at some sensitive lines, in me.

I think it concerns all of us not just because of national pride, but because perhaps for most of us, we have our own personal encounters with people who work in HK or elsewhere around the world.

To me it is not just because of the Spratly’s Islands. There is something personal about it why I have to break a present status not to go online, much more to blog about it.

His foul attacks simply did not escape me.

“WHY WE OPPOSE THE PROPOSED ‘RIGHT OF REPLY’ LAW”

(Letter shared by Jose Torres, Jr. with media practitioners at the “Peace Consultation & Dialogue: Mindanao Media Forum on Peace, Conflict and Security”, hosted by Civil Society Organization Forum for Peace in Iligan City, 7-8th March 2009)

The proposed right of reply measure is by its very nature unconstitutional and only reflects the obsolete, if not selfish mindset of our lawmakers.

Our Constitution states that no law shall be passed abridging the people’s right to information and freedom of expression.

(Article III, Section 4): No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech …”

Article III, Section 7 states: “The right of the people to information on matters of public concern shall be recognized. Access to official records, and to documents and papers pertaining to official acts, transactions, or decisions, as well as to government research data used as basis for policy development, shall be afforded the citizen, subject to such limitations as may be provided by law.”

Unfortunately, this provision is not yet in force because Congress has yet to pass an implementing law.