Environmental Human Rights Defenders: Legal Protections across International Borders
Part VI: A Case Study in the Philippines
Mayon Volcano, Philippines, 2015. Unlicensed image retrieved from Pixabay.
Our second case study, and penultimate post in the series, will focus on the Philippines; the Philippines has been a developing case in the course of the writing of this series, moving rapidly in a direction that is increasingly detrimental to activists, especially EHRDs. Censorship makes it difficult to understand the gravity of the situation in the Philippines, as well as the extreme danger that is faced by those who speak out against violence. Non-lethal governmental measures against dissent, such as criminalization, also target activists and their work. For this reason, the most reliable information regarding the atrocities committed against EHRDs is through independent sources, such as NGOs, or through official UN publications.
An article published by The Guardian in July 2019 reported that half of the deaths (of EHRDs in the Philippines in 2018 were related to “agribusiness,” and a third of them were on the island of Mindanao, 1.6 million hectares of which is proposed to be used for the expansion of industrial plantations. Cases such as that of Leah Tumbalang, a Lumad (Austronesian Indigenous people in the southern Philippines) leader who was murdered for her anti-mining and Indigenous self-determination work in 2019, prove difficult to examine due to lack of information and reporting.
The new Anti-Terrorism Act signed on July 3, 2020 exacerbates the human rights emergency in the Philippines by making any vague hint of “terrorism” (i.e. dissent, activism, opposition to the government) punishable by imprisonment and gives the police the license to use excessive force against those suspected of such activity.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet said that the bill “blurred distinctions between what is criticism of the government and what is terrorism,” and Amnesty International called this “yet another setback for human rights” in the Philippines. While this comes as another measure in Duterte’s war on drugs, it also has the grave potential to silence the voices of many more EHRDs who were already facing persecution in the Philippines, encouraging the extrajudicial killings taking place.
The “Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in the Philippines,” explicitly consider EHRDs and NGOs as affected parties, and delineates how the Anti-Terrorism Act would further affect the work of EHRDs. Although there are transparency measures in place, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights did not receive the statistics on the murders of human rights defenders from the Government of the Philippines, instead relying on “civil society sources.” Some main points to consider from this highly informative report are:
Merely 13 of 383 documented cases regarding the killing of human rights defenders have resulted in convictions, demonstrating the lack of accountability or care for this issue in the Philippines.
The Report goes on to condemn the government’s strategy of publicly naming the organizations or individuals that they consider to be participating in “terrorist” activity, in what Human Rights Watch called a “virtual hit list,” often resulting in threats and death for those environmental, Indigenous, and human rights defenders named.
The Report cites the killings of Haide Flores, lawyer Benjamin Ramos Jr, city councilor Bernardino Patigas, and lawyer Anthony Trinidad; these activists may have gone unnamed f it were not for external and civil reporting efforts.
United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, Tauli-Corpuz (who identifies as Filipina and a member of the Indigenous Kankanaey Igorot people) was named on such a list after making statement in December 2017 urging the government of the Philippines to: cease attacks on the Lumad Indigenous peoples; and to uphold international obligations for human rights. She subsequently was forced to leave the Philippines to evade persecution.
Finally, the “Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in the Philippines” notes that the government of the Philippines continues to endorse the targeted incarceration and apprehension of EHRDs despite COVID-19 and global pandemic measures.
Another mechanism by which Indigenous peoples in the Philippines have legal protections, is under Republic Act No. 8371 known as “The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997,” claiming rights to Ancestral or Traditional lands (Section 8), the right to self-governance (Section 13), participation rights in decision-making processes (Section 16), and other seemingly progressive legal securities, yet the oppression against Indigenous land/water defenders, as well as human rights defenders directly contradicts this Act.
Organizations such as the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) and the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) monitor the developing crisis in the Philippines especially for Indigenous peoples, denouncing “shoot-to-kill” orders made by police enforcement as of April 2020 for any “troublemakers,” opposing government as tensions rise due to the COVID pandemic; for environmental and human rights activists, this comes as a direct threat.
Unfortunately, the Indigenous protections do not supersede the Regalian Doctrine, the Philippine Law on Property and IP Rights. Under this doctrine, the government has rights to lands not registered as “private lands;” Indigenous peoples in the Philippines live primarily on unceded traditional territory now considered “public” land, therefore making it “legally” available for development, as well as there being stipulations for government sovereignty over the resources found on native lands.
The “Front Line Defenders Global Analysis 2019” states that the killing of human rights defenders continues with “near impunity,” in the Philippines.
Next week we’ll wrap up our series on Environmental Human Rights Defenders with some considerations for the future!
References:
“Another lumad leader murdered in Bukidnon”, (26 August 2019), online: Sunstar.
Jason Gutierrez. “Duterte Signs Antiterrorism Bill in Philippines Despite Widespread Criticism”, (3 July 2020), online: The New York Times.
“Dangerous anti-terror law in the Philippines yet another setback for human rights”, online: Amnesty International.
UN. “Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in the Philippines.” (4 June 2020) online: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (A/HRC/44/22).
Alleen Brown. “More Than 160 Environmental Defenders Were Killed in 2018, and Many Others Labeled Terrorists and Criminals”, (30 July 2019), online: The Intercept.
“URGENT ALERT: Shoot to kill order is mass murder, outright display of martial rule”, (2 April 2020), online: Cordillera Peoples Alliance.
Peter Cuasay. “Indigenizing Law or Legalizing Governmentality?: The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act and the Philippine Supreme Court,” (2003) Indiana University Libraries, 6.
Front Line Defenders Global Analysis 2019, online: Front Line, the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, 20.
Adapted from an Academic Paper submitted for International Environmental Law, Osgoode Law Hall & the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University; 2020.
