Advancing human rights

EDITORIAL

Somehow, the passage on third reading last week of two measures in the House of Representatives to advance human rights in the country is an indication that the government, particularly the legislative branch, is addressing the problem.

For so long, officials like those in the military and other armed agencies of government have been accused of committing human rights violations like torture, killings, rapes among other heinous crimes, against the people they have sworn to serve.

A lot of desparecidos or those who have disappeared in the hands of lawmen have not surfaced, buried in places only the monsters know. Over the years, the number of disappearances and killings (locally called salvaging) have grown by the hundreds, if the Ampatuan massacre in Mindanao is any indication.

Erring officials and their hatchet men, according to human rights groups, have not been prosecuted, and if they were charged in court, the judicial system grinds so slow in giving justice to the victims and their families.

Last March 21, the Lower House approved on third reading two of Deputy Speaker Lorenzo R. Tañada priority bills on human rights, House Bills 98 (Enforced Disappearances Bill) and 54 (Compensation for Marcos Human Rights Victims), before adjourning until May.

He said this was a happy development--though long overdue, and a sign that Congress is improving the country’s human rights advocacy.

Tañada said advocacy for human rights is “one area where Congress has made significant contributions in the form of creating timely and responsive legislation, which shows that it can be a force for good if it wants to be.”

According to Tañada, the bills, re-filed from last Congress, were still the product of extensive investigations conducted by the committee on human rights, which he chaired at the time.

“We learned many things during those public hearings all over the country. When we presented them to the body, I think there was an immediate realization that the problem was at least partly due to a void in legislation, and these bills were among those that were crafted directly out of our findings.”

He said if made into law, these two bills will fill a vacuum that allows human rights violations to go on with impunity.

House Bill 54 indemnifies persons who suffered violations of their human rights at the hands of President Marcos, while House Bill 98 defines and penalizes the enforced or involuntary disappearance of citizens as a crime distinct from murder, kidnapping, and serious illegal detention, ordinary crimes named and punished in the penal code.