Despite all the weaknesses of the Philippine criminal justice system, somehow it works, even as it croaks, moans and sighs in pain, agony, hopelessness and demoralization.
This is indeed surprising in a society where corrupt and incompetent politicians and military and police generals and law enforcers rule with the slightest regard and respect for the tenets of the rule of law and the universal principles of human rights.
The Philippine Department of Justice recently indicted 25 policemen for the 2008 massacre of six civilians who died in a gruesome police operation that went haywire and berserk.
It turned a city south of Manila, the capital of the Philippines, into a violent urban jungle where the blood of innocent civilians, including a beautiful and helpless child, were offered in the altar of police brutality.
I am reproducing below two items that recently appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on the abovecited matter.
The second item below describes the very poor institutional condition of the Philippine police force insofar as human rights observance is concerned, citing a report prepared by the US Department of State.
In my previous entries in this blog I had posted verbatim the most recent annual report of the US Department of State on the discouraging state of human rights in the country, for legal research purposes of the visitors of this blog. (Use the search bar of this blog to trace the said item).
Editorial
Preliminary victory
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:33:00 03/13/2010
MANILA, Philippines—The Commission on Human Rights was vindicated when the Department of Justice recently pushed through with the filing of murder charges against the policemen involved in the Dec. 5, 2008 Parañaque shootout that horrified the nation. The charges, approved by the state prosecutor, also mean that the 25 policemen will be held without bail while their trial for the death of six civilians takes place.
The National Police Commission identified procedural lapses and the Internal Affairs Service of the PNP found some cops liable for grave misconduct and negligence. But it is fair to say that the case, overall, prospered because the CHR did its own investigation and clearly identified the wrongdoing of the accused policemen such that no wiggle room was left for police authorities. The cause of professionalism and public interest owes a debt of gratitude to Lilian de Vera, who pursued the case against the cops for killing her husband and daughter during the encounter.
However, this is only a preliminary victory for justice, human rights and professionalism in the police. It has taken over a year for the case to get this far and it will take perhaps as long, if not much longer, for it to be resolved in court. Closure for the bereaved seems to be a long way off; all the while vigilance will have to be maintained.
This early on we can only hope that the lessons of the grisly incident sink in and really lead to reforms in the police. The Parañaque shootout was only the most horrifying of many shocking cases in which trigger-happy cops did the shooting first and asked questions later. Body bags can’t be the measure of effective law enforcement, and civilian casualties will always be unacceptable.
For these reasons the findings of the Napolcom are instructive: the cops in the
Parañaque shootout failed to establish a security cordon (i.e., blockades) in the vicinity of their operations, and furthermore did not provide an ambulance on stand-by.
The DOJ, for its part, exonerated the ground commander of the team of the Highway Patrol Group because he was severely wounded early on in the encounter. The commander’s being a casualty supposedly contributed to the confusion on the ground and the killing of civilians. This suggests that both discipline and command and control weren’t at the level it should have been during the operations—a flaw that many see our police force is prone to even now either because leaders are too gung-ho about charging in, guns blazing, with their men, or because the men aren’t trained to take up the slack should their commander fall.
As lawbreakers—including criminal syndicates that may be armed/trained by former military or police officers or in cahoots with people in the active service—increasingly use high-powered firearms and shock and awe methods, the professionalization of the police and security services is even more urgently required.
It would be most prudent to assume that gangs and syndicates will stop at nothing to get their missions done, and that our law enforcers will increasingly be called upon to risk life and limb to do their duty. It is therefore as much in the interest of the law enforcement agencies as it is a matter of public safety and security to improve—and quickly—the command-and-control mechanisms and procedures on engaging resisting lawbreakers.
We can only hope that our lawmakers will pause from the hurly-burly of the current campaign, to reflect on these lessons and put forward the necessary legislation to help our institutions improve themselves. The Commission on Human Rights, for one, needs greater powers to compel testimony and gather evidence and thus serve not just as a moral, but also as a legal, deterrent to the abuse of human rights.
The DOJ itself can surely make it a goal to investigate and bring to court within six months the offenses it is charged to deal with. And judicial reforms are a necessary counterpart to ensuring the swift yet impartial trial of cases in the courts of justice.
See:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/editorial/view/20100313-258490/Preliminary-victory
PNP suffering from deep-seated institutional
Deficiencies-report
By Pia Lee-Brago
(The Philippine Star)
Updated March 14, 2010 12:00 AM
MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine National Police (PNP) has deep-rooted institutional deficiencies and has suffered from a widely held and apparently accurate public perception that corruption remains a problem, according to the US Department of State’s latest human rights report.
Although efforts were underway to reform and professionalize the institution through improved training, expanded community outreach, and pay raises, the 2009 Country Report on Human Rights Practices released Friday said the PNP’s Internal Affairs Service remained largely ineffective.
“Members of the PNP were regularly accused of torture, soliciting bribes, and other illegal acts,” the report said.
The Department of National Defense (DND) directs the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), which shares responsibility for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations with the 125,000-member PNP.
The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) directs the PNP, which is responsible for the enforcement of law and order and urban counterterrorism.
Last year, there were 177 administrative cases filed against members of the police force, including administrative officials and police officers, for various human rights violations. Of the 177 cases filed, 137 were resolved and 40 were undergoing summary proceedings by the end of 2009.
In response to these cases, the PNP dismissed 240 of its personnel. The deputy ombudsman for the military received 71 cases involving alleged human rights abuses by the military and law enforcement officers during the year, majority of which were filed against low-ranking police and military officials.
The Commission on Appointments determines whether senior military officers selected for promotion have a history of human rights violations and solicits input from the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and other agencies during the course of its background investigations.
“In some instances, a promotion can be withheld indefinitely when the commission uncovers a record of human rights abuses. Negative findings do not, however, preclude promotion, and there were no reports of promotions withheld on human rights grounds during the year,” the report added.
As of August 2009, the AFP Human Rights Office monitored no new cases of killings, disappearances, or torture during the year. Government-armed civilian militias supplemented the AFP and the PNP. Some politicians and clan leaders maintained their own private armies, particularly in Mindanao.
“The AFP did not aggressively pursue internal investigations into alleged serious human rights abuses by some of its members,” the report said.
The report said security forces and antigovernment insurgents committed a number of arbitrary and unlawful killings.
The CHR investigated 57 new complaints of politically motivated killings that occurred from January through November.
The CHR suspected personnel from the PNP and the AFP in some killings of leftist activists operating in rural areas.
The nongovernment organization Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP) investigated allegations of summary executions by government security forces. The TFDP was unable to investigate all of these allegations, but it counted eight cases involving 12 victims of summary executions by government forces during the year.
By year’s end the PNP’s Task Force Usig, responsible for monitoring unexplained killings, recorded 156 cases of killings since 2001, nine of which occurred during the year. Of these, 95 cases were filed in court and prosecutor’s offices, 60 cases were under investigation, and one case was closed. There was one conviction of a state actor during the year.
On May 15, President Arroyo abolished the Interagency Legal Action Group, which some human rights groups alleged was a tool for targeting activists. The PNP expanded human rights training and community outreach efforts during the year and maintained a network of 1,841 human rights desk officers at the national, regional, provincial, and municipal levels.
Human rights groups and the CHR observed little progress in implementing and enforcing some reforms aimed at decreasing the incidence of killings.
Funding for the CHR and the government witness protection programs were considered inadequate.
According to local human rights groups, government forces were responsible for disappearances. From January through November, the CHR investigated nine new cases of enforced disappearances, abductions, and kidnappings involving 15 victims, some of whom had been detained without a warrant.
Terrorist and criminal groups also committed a number of kidnappings for ransom in the southern Philippines.
Prison conditions were rudimentary and sometimes harsh. Provincial jails and prisons were overcrowded, lacked basic infrastructure, and provided prisoners with an inadequate diet, the report further said.
The State Department said the report that covers 194 countries is the single-most exhaustive and comprehensive compilation of information about human rights in the world.
The US Government compiled the reports for the past 34 years pursuant to a requirement placed on the US executive by law in part to help the US Congress inform its work in assessing requests for US foreign military and economic assistance, as well as to set trade policies and US participation in the multilateral development banks and other financial institutions.
see:
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=557804&publicationSubCategoryId=63
