| 8 September 2010 |
| Our journey for human rights to Canada and the US |
PRESS STATEMENT issued on 20 March 2007 by MS. SHARON ROSE JOY RUIZ-DUREMDES, General Secretary, National Council of Churches in the Philippines
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Bishop Eliezer Pascua and myself are two of the nine-member delegation of Roman Catholic and Protestant bishops and clergy, Christian and Muslim human rights defenders named the Ecumenical Voice for Peace and Human Rights in the Philippines. The team was invited by churches and church-based organizations in Canada and the United States to draw attention to the escalation of political repression in the Philippines. We brought our message to stop the extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and other forms of human rights violations to ecumenical bodies, faith communities, members of Parliament and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Canada. We challenged the Canadian government, through its members of Parliament (or MPs) to denounce in the strongest terms possible the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, to review its development and military assistance to the Philippines insofar as this is being used to exacerbate the killings of human rights defenders and social activists. Our experience in Canada was one of genuine openness on the part of the MPs to raise the issue in the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the House of Commons. The churches, human rights and justice groups readily offered support in sustaining the campaign though public awareness building and lobby work with their MPs. We also raised the issue of an international electoral monitoring team during the May elections this year. The groups which we had occasion to speak to are presently conducting a massive petition signing against extrajudicial killings.
In the United States, the team attended the Ecumenical Advocacy Days and the International Conference on Human Rights in the Philippines at which we made presentations on the political situation of the country. These conferences were capped by briefings in the State Department and the House of Representatives, which, in turn, climaxed in a hearing before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee headed by Senator Barbara Boxer. At the hearing, the team urged the Foreign Relations Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives to (1) ask the Philippine government to immediately stop the extrajudicial killings, abductions, torture, and other forms of human rights violations; (2) ask the Philippine government to bring to justice members of its security forces and their agents against whom there is credible evidence of human rights violations; (3) call upon the Philippine government to rescind its national security policy particularly insofar as making no distinction between combatants and non-combatants as well as labeling those who advocate for human rights of being “enemies of the State”. These calls were accepted by Senator Boxer.
Contrary to what some Philippine government officials claim that the hearing was a case of intervention into domestic affairs, the team believes that respect for human rights goes beyond national boundaries and anyone has a right to raise human rights issues anywhere, everywhere. What the team did was to merely remind the Philippine government of its duty to comply with its commitment to uphold international law. Moreover, the churches in the US who have all the right to approach their Congress on any issue, including human rights, were the ones who asked for the hearing. The team members were only asked to be resource persons on the said issue.
The North American visit also gave occasion to launch and popularize “Let the Stones Cry Out: An Ecumenical Report on the Human Rights Situation in the Philippines and a Call to Action”, a comprehensive human rights document released by the National Council of Churches in the Philippines. The lobby work in North America was an important step to put up the international pressure to stop the killings in the Philippines.
At present, some members of the team are in Geneva to further popularize the Ecumenical Report and to submit it before the UN Human Rights Council.
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