“This is hogwash,” Olalia said when asked to comment. “The facts speak for themselves. No conviction involving any military or security forces credibly implicated. The killings and disappearances continue. Where are our colleagues, clients, friends, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters who have been taken away?”

Karapatan has documented 902 cases of extrajudicial killings and 180 enforced disappearances from January 2001 – when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was catapulted to power through a popular uprising – to March 2008.

UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions Philip Alston went on a mission to investigate extrajudicial killings in the Philippines late last year, and came up with a report specifically pointing to the military’s involvement in these. “In some parts of the country, the armed forces have followed a deliberate strategy of systematically hunting down the leaders of leftist organizations,” Alston, who is also a professor at New York University (NYU), said.

The issues of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances have brought the Arroyo administration criticisms not only from local groups but also from international organizations – among them the World Council of Churches (WCC), Amnesty International, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), the Uniting Church in Australia, and Human Rights Watch.

In its submission on the Philippines to the UPR, Amnesty International aired concern on the non-conviction of state forces involved in extrajudicial killings.

“Amnesty International is concerned that the failure to deliver justice to the victims of such killings reflects a reluctance on the part of the government to fulfill its obligation under national and international law to protect the right to life of every individual within its jurisdiction,” the Amnesty International document submitted to the UPR reads. “The organization is also concerned that these killings have played a major role in the break-down of the protracted peace process and an accompanying human rights agreement between the government and the National Democratic Front (which represents the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army).”

The London-based Nobel Prize-winning organization cited the Summit on Political Killings and Enforced Disappearances initiated by the Supreme Court last year, as well as the promulgation of the Rule on the Writ of Amparo.

But Amnesty International also voiced fears that the imposition of Administrative Order No. 197, which urges “legislation for safeguards against disclosure of military secrets and undue interference in military operations inimical to national security,” endangers the implementation of the writ of amparo. “This may be an attempt by the government to counter amparo writs by invoking national security or confidentiality of information,” Amnesty International stated.

Economic rights

In the area of economic rights, among the points emphasized in the PNR is that the Philippines has a “comparatively respectable” Gini coefficient, or Inequality of Income Index, compared with other countries in the “developing” world.

“That is ridiculous,” Olalia said. “It is like saying that we are lucky to be less miserable, despondent and hungry even if a few of our own countrymen are into ostentatious living because of massive graft and corruption, anti-people policies, and serving as willing slaves to foreign greedy interests.”

Based on the UN’s Human Development Report 2007/2008, the Philippines has a Gini coefficient of 44.5 – with 0 representing absolute equality and 100 representing absolute inequality. This was cited in the PNR.

Among the 177 countries ranked in the Human Development Report 2007/2008, there are only 37 countries with higher Gini coefficients, meaning having more inequality, than the Philippines: Argentina, Panama, Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, Malaysia, Venezuela, Colombia, Dominican Republic, China, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Jamaica, Honduras, Bolivia, Guatemala, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Nepal, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Togo, Uganda, Cote d’loivre, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Niger, Guinea-Bissau, and Sierra Leone.

Arroyo has made much of the economic growth posted by the country under her administration. In a speech on Jan. 11, she said:

“Today, the Philippines is on a path to permanent economic growth and stability. We’ve created seven million new jobs in seven years… We’ve achieved 28 consecutive quarters of economic growth in the last seven years. And that’s something that even our neighbors cannot say. There were times during this 28 quarters that the… Singapore for instance, experienced negative growth and many of our neighbors and even the United States, there were quarters when they experienced negative growth.

“And in the last, in the three quarters of 2007 for which we have had our accounting completed, our economy rose 7.3 percent and this is the fastest growth in more than a decade, in a very, very long time.”

This economic growth, however, has been criticized by no less than the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as “among the most inequitable” in Southeast Asia. The ADB also noted that the Philippines has one of the highest Gini coefficients in Southeast Asia.

The ADB’s findings on inequality of income distribution are bolstered by data recently released by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), which show that the number of poor Filipinos increased by 3.8 million from 2003 to 2006. Even with its low poverty threshold of P41.25 ($0.988 at an exchange rate of $1:P41.76) for each individual Filipino – which is much lower than the living wage estimates of the National Wages and Productivity Commission (NWPC) – the rise in poverty rates from 2003 to 2006 is visible.

Based on February 2008 data from the NWPC, the national average family living wage stands at P767 ($18.37) a day.

The highest regional minimum wage at present is P362 ($8.67) for the National Capital Region (NCR), which has a regional daily family living wage of P853 ($20.43). The region with the lowest minimum wage rate is the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), with only P200 ($4.79) even as it has a regional daily family living wage of P1,185 ($28.38). (Bulatlat.com)

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