Jul 16, 2007, 9:23 GMT
Manila - The Philippines' chief justice on Monday lamented that human rights have come under assault with the government's failure to resolve a spate of extra-judicial killings that victimized mostly leftist activists.
Chief Justice Reynato Puno said the Supreme Court was determined to lead other branches of government in protecting constitutional rights, enforcing laws and putting a stop to the killings that have left almost 900 people dead since 2001.
'Over the years, the expectations that human rights could be best protected by the political branches of government has been diluted,' he told the start of a two-day National Consultative Summit on Extra-Judicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances.
'The time has come to say less and do more,' he added. 'They who seek to remain in the sidelines when human rights are under assault shall be condemned by history into irrelevance.'
Puno also cautioned the public against apathy, noting that 'shock has been anaesthetized by the escalation of the killings and disappearances.
'If there are compelling reasons for this summit, one of them is to prevent losing eye contact with these killings and disappearances, revive our righteous indignation and spur our united search for the elusive solution to this pestering problem,' he said.
'We may not know how to solve this problem, but we do know that the sure way to lose its solution is to be immobilized by doubt, to be terrorized by the thought that any effort to lick the problem will no more than amount as an effort to square the circle,' he added.
According to local human rights group Karapatan, nearly 900 people have become victims of extra-judicial killings since 2001. Most of them are political and leftist activists, labour leaders, human rights workers, journalists and even members of the judiciary.
There have also been about 180 cases of forced disappearances of activists and hundreds of cases of harassments and torture during the same period.
During the summit, human rights and leftist groups reiterated accusations that the military was behind the attacks, which were being perpetrated under an anti-insurgency campaign aimed at wiping out the communist insurgency by 2010.
Renato Reyes, secretary general of the leftist New Nationalist Alliance, noted that under the government's anti-insurgency campaign, even legitimate organizations are considered enemies.
'We can no longer tolerate the fact that the armed forces, the police and the civilian officials maliciously label us as mere communist fronts because this label incites violent attacks on our leaders and members,' Reyes said.
Foreign governments and international organizations have also expressed concern over the state of extra-judicial killings in the Philippines. They have demanded the government to take more measures to resolve the problem.
Last month, the New York-based Human Rights Watch alleged that the Philippine military was waging 'a dirty war' against leftist activists in the country. Other foreign groups have also blamed the armed forces for the attacks.
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