THE appointment of former Armed Forces chief of staff Hermogenes Esperon as head of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process may adversely affect the ongoing peace process, citing the military official’s bad human-rights record.

Aurora Parong, Amnesty International (AI) Philippines section director, said the fact that Esperon was the Armed Forces chief of staff during the time when extrajudicial killings and other forms of human-rights violations were rampant in the country makes it especially difficult for Esperon to project himself as a man of peace.

Parong said human-rights violations—particularly extrajudicial killings of political activists and journalists were rampant during Esperon’s stint as the military’s chief of staff, which makes him somehow responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, which include human-rights workers and peace advocates.

AI launched the AI 2008 Report: State of the World’s Human Rights, wherein the group called on government leaders to renew their commitment to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights after sixty years of alleged broken promises to promote human rights.

During a roundtable discussion with the diplomatic community, the government, representative of non-government organizations and civil- society organizations that was held simultaneously with the report’s global launch, human-rights advocates scored the lack of concerted effort on the part of the Philippine government—the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches—to end impunity, especially for enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

AI underscored the need to improve witness protection and command responsibility for human-rights violations must be pursued. 

“A resurgence of human-rights violations is not a far-fetched scenario if impunity prevails,” the report said.

Parong said it was during Esperon’s stint that the Philippines was criticized by the United Nations Human Rights Council for the spate of political killings. It was also during that period when it was established by the UN human-rights body that some, if not most of the killings, were perpetrated by the military.

AI notes dramatic decrease in human-rights violations

AMNESTY International (AI) on Wednesday noted the “dramatic decrease in the number of victims of extrajudicial killings in 2007 compared with the previous records in 2005 and 2006.”

FORMER elections chairman Benjamin Abalos Sr. was a no-show on Wednesday’s continuation of the hearing on the controversial $329-million national broadband network (NBN) deal with China’s ZTE Co. at the Office of the Ombudsman, creating tension among lawyers of the contending parties.

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority’s Law Enforcement Department (SBMA-LED) and Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group-Task Force Subic (PASG-TFS) agents confiscated some P4.62 billion worth of methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu after a foiled attempt to smuggle the illegal drugs into Subic.

A PALL of gloom descended over the House of Representatives on Wednesday as the body of labor leader and party-list Rep. Crispin Beltran, more popularly known as Ka Bel, of Anakpawis lay at the plenary hall where a Mass and necrological service were held before the militant legislator was laid to rest in Bulacan.

TO mitigate the effects of the skyrocketing price of petroleum products on the country’s economy, legislators have proposed the implementation of energy-conservation measures such as carpooling and reducing government working days to four.

THE environment group Greenpeace, together with several legislators, on Wednesday urged the government to adopt a national energy program that would harness the massive renewable- energy potentials of the country while reducing its dependence on dirty energy resources, particularly coal.

THE Swedish minister for migration and asylum, Tobias Billstrom, said his government is working with other Schengen member-countries of the European Union in their embassies in Manila to accept and process short-stay visas to Sweden, amid possible constraints on the visa application of Filipinos traveling that country owing to the closure of its embassy here starting next month.

THE appointment of former Armed Forces chief of staff Hermogenes Esperon as head of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process may adversely affect the ongoing peace process, citing the military official’s bad human-rights record.