The merit of the health-oriented, rights-based and development-driven reproductive health law has been once again recognized with the approval by the Duterte administration of the country’s National Program on Family Planning.
This was underscored by Rep. Edcel C. Lagman who is the principal author of R.A. No. 10354 or the “Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012”.
For the second year running, and while the midterm elections are about to be held, Mindanao will continue to be under military rule after the Supreme Court voted 9-4 to uphold the third extension of martial law until the end of 2019.
In greenlighting the extension, the highest court of the land has shown how little it regards its power under the Constitution to “review… the sufficiency of the factual basis of the proclamation of martial law or the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.”
A full week since the announcement of the ruling on Feb. 19, the text of the decision has yet to be released. But Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin provided a glimpse of the majority thinking in the tribunal when he declared in a public function that government reports on violence in Mindanao, as basis for the new extension, need not be accurate.
Since it was established by the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1980, the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has received over 57,000 cases attributed to government forces from 108 countries.
Of the 786 “desaparecidos” reported in the Philippines, 131 have been found alive, including 19 in detention, and 30 found dead.
That leaves 625 cases from 1975 to 2012 outstanding in the records of the Working Group as of 2018.
The Working Group’s definition of enforced disappearance includes three elements: “deprivation of liberty against the will of the person; involvement of government officials, at least by acquiescence; and refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person.”
The wholesale delisting of enforced disappearance cases is sweeping under the rug the ultimate truth about the victims’ fate and ensures their violators’ impunity.
This will be the result of the government’s efforts to delist 625 cases of involuntary disappearance from the records of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance.
The arrest of Rappler Chief Executive Officer Maria Ressa “tolls the death knell for freedom of expression and of the press,” asserts Albay Rep. Edcel C. Lagman.
The Bicol solon denounced the late afternoon arrest of Ressa on February 13 even as he also questioned why the warrant of arrest did not recommend bail when cyber libel is a bailable offense.
