By MARY ANN MANJA BAYANG

(We are publishing the following to give our readers a briefer on the country’s human rights situation.This is the second of three parts. Click here to read the first part. — Ed.)

Roadmap to nowhere

Part IV paragraph 148 to paragraph 174 of the National Report entitled “Roadmap and Expectations” contain the commitments of the Arroyo government to human rights protection. It is telling that the Report devoted 26 paragraphs on issues such as poverty, gender equality, health, and other supposed commitment to respect human rights, but did not contain a single reference to extra judicial killings or enforced disappearance in its ‘roadmap’ a foreboding omen of things to come. Like the body of the report, the ‘commitments’ in Part IV are nothing more than generalized statements to appease the international concern over human rights violations, and will not lead to the systemic elimination of human rights violations in the country.

The HRC Review: Unanswered Questions

Even the report of Sec. Eduardo Ermita that the Philippine Report has been ‘applauded’ is not completely true. The Philippine delegation could not have gained unanimous “applause” if it failed to answer an important question—which of the supposed measures undertaken by government exactly contributed to the decrease in the killings considering that no serious and genuine investigation and prosecution of the perpetrators have taken place. According to National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) Deputy Secretary General Edre Olalia who is in Geneva for the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), “Despite courtesy questions from allied countries, the stage-managed road show of lies, hypocrisy and fantasy did not prevent at least a sizable number of countries such as France, Norway, Slovenia, Japan, New Zealand, UK, Canada, Latvia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Algeria, Korea, Australia, Switzerland, Netherlands, Mexico, and even the US to incessantly question or comment – though diplomatically but some very firmly – on the issues of extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, women and children’s rights, migrant rights, corruption and non-signing or ratification to instruments against torture and disappearances.” Read the rest of this entry →

By ARTURO BOQUIREN

Do we have a food crisis? Several writers and economists wrote on the topic recently and say we do not have a food crisis or a rice crisis — only a price crisis! Government says we do not have a rice shortage but it has dispatched military trucks to distribute rice and adds that the measure is necessary to prevent food riots. Scary and yet it asserts we do not have rice shortage nor a rice crisis.

A number of writers and development analysts also assert that we do not have a rice shortage in the Philippines. We only have a price problem and hoarding. For them, the middlemen are the culprits. However, we have had middlemen since time immemorial. Rice middlemen can only create shortages when there is a real shortage. Rice middlemen are too many (but there are big ones) and, besides, we have solved the problem in the Philippines a time long ago by simply flooding the market with rice stocks good for at least three months. Read the rest of this entry →