BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
Breaking News
June 14, 2007 – 6:40pm

The Delegation of the European Commission has announced that the European Union (EU) will send a team of six experts on a 10-day technical mission on extrajudicial killings to the Philippines starting June 18.

The experts will be coming from Finland, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the European Commission. Their areas of expertise are in the fields of investigation techniques, human rights and international humanitarian law, and forensic science.

“The Philippine government has reiterated its determination to stamp out the extrajudicial killings which risk tarnishing the country’s international reputation, and to identify and bring to justice those responsible,” said EU Ambassador to the Philippines Alistair MacDonald in a news conference at the office of the Delegation of the European Commission in Makati City this afternoon. “The EU is therefore responding positively to the government’s request for technical assistance to strengthen the capability of Philippine institutions to address these issues.”

The Arroyo administration had come under pressure from the EU last year, when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo visited its headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. The pressure on the Arroyo regime had come amid condemnation of the extrajudicial killings by international bodies such as Amnesty International, the World Council of Churches (WCC), and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC).

Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights) has documented nearly 900 victims of extrajudicial killings since 2001, when Arroyo was catapulted to power through a popular uprising. At least 350 of the victims are known to have been affiliated with cause-oriented groups, Karapatan data further show. State forces have been identified as the perpetrators in many of the killings.

MacDonald, however, clarified that the mission will not delve into the extrajudicial killings themselves.

“The technical mission commencing next week is not in any sense an investigation or a fact-finding exercise in relation to the killings themselves,” he said. “That is the sole responsibility of the Philippine government. Instead, the experts will be working with the Philippine authorities and civil society to identify areas where EU technical assistance, training and advice on such matters could be most useful.”

MacDonald said the mission will be a needs-assessment mission to evaluate technical assistance needs of the Philippine government in areas like the establishment of special courts and the training of prosecutors, strengthening the Witness Protection Program, technical and forensic capacity-building for case investigations, and human rights awareness programs within the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP).

The European Union is among the six biggest aid donors to the Philippines, based on data from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID); the others are the U.S., Japan, Australia, Germany, and Canada.

Karapatan and groups like the Reality of Aid Network are calling on donor countries to suspend foreign aid to the Philippines on account of the human rights violations under the Arroyo regime.(Bulatlat.com)

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