Victims, relatives and human rights defenders do the real work vs HR violations

We should really be alarmed and dead worried when we have a President and Commander-in-Chief that mouths the same old yarn like Ferdinand Marcos and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. President Noynoy Aquino, in his ignorance, feigned or otherwise, encourages human rights violations when he viciously attacks effective messengers of truth. A sore, childish, parochial and partisan reaction to serious, credible and documented violations does not solve or address, much less blow away all the persistent, even if very audible, charges. This is unbecoming of a head of government obligated to be the guarantor of human rights.

The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, a group which handles cases of several victims, is genuinely puzzled when so far, it is the president who lacks the credible record of a human rights advocate. In three years, PNoy has not captured any big fish, nor filed any convincing complaint for human rights violations. What has he really done in the concrete but routinely deny the violations happening daily?

Yet his administration shrewdly piggybacks on legally strong and tight cases filed and doggedly pursued by human rights defenders but at the same time scoffs at their imagined inaction. For the record, only the victims, relatives, and human rights defenders have mustered among themselves the resources and support to investigate and initiate the cases. Would he rather that people keep their silence in bowed submission?

Recurring, repeated and unpunished practice of a pattern of violations a state-sanctioned policy makes. With a cloud of cluelessness, and a curious case of complicity, over the president’s extensive prosecutorial and law enforcement powers, we’re left to do the work of a government fixated on its approval ratings rather than the number of the dead and the missing.

Reference: Atty. Edre U. Olalia, NUPL secretary general (09175113373)