{"id":16020,"date":"2025-02-19T21:20:06","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T13:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/?p=16020"},"modified":"2025-02-19T21:35:50","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T13:35:50","slug":"ph-govt-escr-untruthful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/ph-govt-escr-untruthful\/","title":{"rendered":"PH gov\u2019t untruthful before UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Philippine government has not been truthful with the United Nations (UN) Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) during its session on the country\u2019s compliance with its human rights obligations. Its claims of not red-tagging, supposedly well-founded prosecutions and lack of civil society engagement with the state on the issues they raise are contradicted by on-going vilification of activists and non-government organizations (NGOs), case dismissals and acquittals, and numerous engagements with the State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Responding to queries by the UN CESCR about red-tagging and the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) of 2020 during the 77<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;session of the CESCR on February 18, 2025, officials of the National Security Council (NSC), Presidential Human Rights Committee (PHRC) and National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) made statements that were evidently inaccurate and meant to mislead the Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>NTF-ELCAC executive director and undersecretary Ernesto Torres, Jr said that \u201cThere is no state policy to attack, harass and intimidate human rights defenders\u201d and asserted \u201cThe Philippine government has consistently rejected the word red-tagging due to the absence of any policy or jurisprudence sustaining such claims.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, he immediately contradicted himself with the admission that \u201cWe provide accurate information about individuals involved in terror-grooming \u2013 empowering people to make informed choices that protect themselves and their communities.\u201d While not conceding the term \u201cred-tagging,\u201d Torres in effect admitted this albeit portraying the vilification as innocuous information campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Torres also cannot feign ignorance of the Supreme Court (SC) en banc decision declaring that red-tagging, vilification, labelling and guilt by association threaten a person\u2019s right to life, liberty or security (G.R. No. 254753, Deduro v. Maj. Gen. Vinoya, July 4, 2023) nor the recent Quezon City Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 306 ruling on the red-tagging of a journalist and his family and awarding Php2 million in damages as the first application of that SC decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>NSC assistant director-general Jonathan Malaya meanwhile said that \u201cAll cases filed for violation of the ATA are a result of extensive investigation and evidence gathered by law enforcement agencies\u201d and moreover claimed that \u201cThe courts conducted their own judicial review of probable cause and concurred with the findings of the Department of Justice [and], as a result, warrants of arrest were issued. If there was no basis or misuse of the law the courts would\u2019ve dismissed the cases outright.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, Malaya must certainly be aware of many instances of such dismissals he insinuates do not happen. These include cases of:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol>\n<li>Financing terrorism, dismissed in court\n<ul>\n<li>Rhonel Alconera \u2013 Motu proprio dismissed on April 2, 2024 for insufficiency of evidence, no probable cause (so no warrant of arrest)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Paul Tagle and Fritz Labiano \u2013 Motu proprio dismissed on June 5, 2024 for insufficiency of evidence, no probable cause (so no warrant of arrest)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u00a0Evelyn Mu\u00f1oz (Motu proprio dismissed on January 10, 2025 for insufficiency of evidence, no probable cause (so no warrant of arrest)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Terrorism, dismissed in court\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a0Japer Gurung and Junior Ramos \u2013 dismissed on demurrer on June 17, 2021<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Nathanael Santiago, et al \u2013 Motu proprio dismissed on September 3, 2024 for insufficiency of evidence, no probable cause (so no warrant of arrest)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Desiree Jaranilla, et al \u2013 Motu proprio dismissed on November 25, 2024 for insufficiency of evidence, no probable cause (so no warrant of arrest)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Miguela Piniero \u2013 dismissed on demurrer on January 10, 2025<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Terrorism, dismissed during preliminary investigation\n<ul>\n<li>Rev. Glofie Baluntong \u2013 dismissed on October 6, 2022<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Kenneth Rementilla and Jasmin Yvette Rubia \u2013 dismissed on November 3, 2023<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hailey Pecayo \u2013 dismissed on November 20, 2023<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>PHRC Secretariat executive director and undersecretary Severo Catura claimed that the reports the UN CESCR are receiving have not been given to the government, and appealed the Committee to \u201ckindly ask those NGOs and CSOs that have brought up cases of violations of the ATA to kindly refer this to the State so that there could be engagements.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, Catura cannot be unaware that IBON Foundation, human rights group Karapatan and others filed separate complaints about red-tagging and terrorist-labelling with the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) since at least as early as March 4, 2019. Dozens of individuals and groups also actively participated in the CHR\u2019s National Inquiry on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders conducted on September 9-12, 2019, and again in the CHR\u2019s Public Inquiry on Red-tagging on July 29-30, 2024. These are aside from the constant filings of individual complaints which were what triggered these hearings to begin with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The government\u2019s attempt to obfuscate its systematic human rights violations are rife with inconsistencies and omissions. They do not reflect the legal record and are inconsistent with well-documented instances, especially at the CHR, of civil society organizations filing complaints. This pattern of official denial even before the CESCR tends to indicate insincerity and does not augur well for progress in terms of upholding civil and political rights, nor promoting economic, social and cultural rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>IBON Foundation is a member of the Defend NGOs network composed of 105 civil society organizations, including the country\u2019s largest NGO networks, in response to increasing judicial attacks on development and humanitarian NGOs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>STATEMENT<\/p>\n<p>The government\u2019s attempt to obfuscate its systematic human rights violations are rife with inconsistencies and omissions. They do not reflect the legal record and are inconsistent with well-documented instances, especially at the CHR, of civil society organizations filing complaints.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-nosidebarbanner.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[2048,14,961],"tags":[3587,204,3091,3751,2972,2160,3752,2414,3750,2875],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16020"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16020"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16023,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16020\/revisions\/16023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}