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President Arroyo on Wednesday endorsed the
recommendations and requests of the Commission on Human
Rights, among them a proposed law against torture, a
full review of the criminal justice system, and the
grant of fiscal autonomy to the commission to strengthen
the institution,
At the
International Human Rights Day celebration in Malacañang,
the President said that a “strong and independent
[human-rights] commission is vital to the protection and
promotion of human rights.”
“We
endorse all the recommendations and requests made by
chairman [Purificacion] Quisumbing, measures that will
respect fiscal autonomy, measures that will strengthen
its financial resources, measures that will give it
quasi-judicial powers and this would be in the realm of
legislation,” she said.
On the
request of Quisumbing, she will instruct the Department
of Budget and Management to study how the savings of the
CHR “can be applied to other programs and salary
augmentation rather than being returned to the National
Treasury.”
In her
remarks, Quisumbing said the CHR suffered a “severe blow
on [its] constitutional mandate” because of a Supreme
Court ruling that affirmed its fiscal autonomy to be
“very limited.”
She said
the ruling has caused a 20 to 50 percent reduction in
the salary of CHR employees. “You, Madam President,
tried to soften this blow but you also said that we need
to talk to the DBM for us to make sure that we can
return at least some of our fiscal autonomy. The DBM has
not acted on our efforts and I’d like to report this
publicly.”
Quisumbing also pushed for a law against torture that
she said goes hand in hand with the campaign against
extrajudicial killings. “There must be a law against
torture because we cannot be talking about extrajudicial
killings, we cannot be talking about enforced
disappearances without addressing torture as provided
for in the [United Nations] treaty.”
The CHR
chief also commended the Armed Forces and the National
Police “for trying very hard to respond to the call for
them to do reforms. . . The fact that they have put in
place their human rights offices at the proper level, we
see this as a good sign.” |
