{"id":9429,"date":"2024-05-17T01:00:59","date_gmt":"2024-05-17T00:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/?p=9429"},"modified":"2024-05-16T11:05:21","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T10:05:21","slug":"us-report-no-significant-changes-of-human-rights-situation-in-philippines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/us-report-no-significant-changes-of-human-rights-situation-in-philippines\/","title":{"rendered":"US report: No significant changes of human rights situation in Philippines"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US Department of State’s report<\/a> on the human rights situation in the Philippines in 2023, published on April 22, 2024, found that human rights violations continued to occur<\/a> under the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Furthermore, the annual report<\/a> recorded<\/a> \u201cno significant changes in the human rights situation,\u201d even though \u201cthe number of incidents of arbitrary and extrajudicial killings and some other abuses by government agents decreased.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 58-page report emphasized<\/a> concerns about the continued impunity of police, government officials and security forces, particularly in the context of the government’s anti-drug campaign. The report also referred to the documentation of the Dahas Project of the University of the Philippines, according to which 209 drug-related killings took place between January and August 2023.<\/p>\n

In addition to extrajudicial killings, the report named<\/a> enforced disappearances, torture, restricted freedom of expression and media freedom and serious government restrictions on or harassment of domestic human rights organizations as existing human rights violations. The report highlighted that the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (CHR) documented<\/a> 10 cases of abduction and enforced disappearance of 15 people between January and July 2023. Despite a law prohibiting torture, some security forces have also been accused<\/a> of mistreating and torturing suspects and detainees, according to the CHR.<\/p>\n

The practice of so-called \u201cred-tagging\u201d (i.e., branding individuals or organizations as \u201cterrorist\u201d) has continued under President Marcos Jr. without the government \u201cstopping or condemning\u201d it, according to the US report<\/a>. The report also emphasized the continuing threat to journalists, drawing<\/a> on documentation from the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP).\u00a0 From January to April 2023, the NUJP counted<\/a> 60 violations (i.e., harassment or \u201cred-tagging\u201d) against press freedom.<\/p>\n

The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) declared<\/a> the US report as \u201cmisleading\u201d and that it did not reflect the reality on the ground. The DFA called<\/a> for a more thorough review of the sources and updating of the references. The Philippine Department of Justice (DOJ) stated<\/a> that the extrajudicial killings mentioned in the report were not related to the exercise of freedom of expression under the current administration but had personal motives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo\u00a0\u00a9 Raffy Lerma<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US Department of State’s report on the human rights situation in the Philippines in 2023, published on April 22, 2024, found that human rights violations continued to occur under the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Furthermore, the annual report recorded \u201cno significant changes in the human rights situation,\u201d even though \u201cthe number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6758,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[64,63,58,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-war-on-drugs-en","category-human-rights-defenders","category-human-rights-news","category-international-institutions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9429"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9477,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9429\/revisions\/9477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}