THE United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights on Thursday appealed to House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III to reject proposals to revive capital punishment.
In a letter addressed to both chambers of Congress, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, said that an international agreement signed by the Philippines prohibits the country from reinstating the death penalty.
“Yesterday evening, our High Commissioner sent a letter to the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate. He appealed to all members of Congress to uphold the international human rights obligations of the Philippines and maintain the abolition of the death penalty,” the UNHCR said in a statement.
“Failing to do so would violate Philippines’ obligations under international law. The Philippines is party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Second Optional Protocol on the Abolition of Death Penalty,” it added.
Zeid also reiterated to Alvarez and Pimentel that “decades of research have proven that there was no reliable evidence that the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime.”
“What we do know is that executions have led to the wrongful killing of many innocent people across the world. The use of the death penalty leaves no room for human error, with the gravest of consequences. Moreover, statistics worldwide have repeatedly demonstrated that the use of the death penalty consistently and disproportionately discriminates against the poor and most marginalized individuals and subsequently results in social injustice,” Zeid said in his letter.
The UN Human Rights commissioner asked Congress to instead pass measures “strengthening the rule of law, ensuring an effective justice system and reducing drug use by adopting a strong public health approach to prevention, harm reduction and other forms of health care and treatment in accordance with international standards.”
The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, meanwhile, criticized the House of Representatives for trying to railroad the passage of the death penalty bill.
“We need for Filipinos to unite against the reimposition of capital punishment than ever because of attempts to railroad the passage of the death penalty bill,” CBCP president Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said in a statement.
The archbishop said it is a “tragedy” that the proposed measure is being pushed for approval in Congress before Christmas.
“In resisting the threat of the restoration of the death penalty, we cannot be disunited or indifferent. On this pro-life issue let us truly unite. Come out and make a stand!” he said.
Voting 12-6-1, the bill restoring the death penalty for all heinous crimes hurdled the House justice committee on December 7.
Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, one of the co-authors of the bill, said he is confident the measure will be approved by the House by Christmas.
Church leaders called on the faithful to join a prayer rally at the Parish of St. Dominic in San Carlos City on December 12, to resist the threat of the death penalty.
Senate President Pro Tempore Franklin Drilon said the Liberal Party senators would not vote in favor of reimposing the death penalty.
Aside from the four LP senators in the Senate, Drilon said, other senators have joined them in opposing capital punishment—but he would not say who these were.
“Our less than ideal justice system can result in someone being executed when he was in fact innocent,” said Drilon.
He also said it took several years before an accused is charged or sentenced.
“That goes back to our position that there must be reforms in our justice system before we even consider the reimposition of death penalty because of the possibility of errors being committed, and you cannot correct the error once it is committed,” Drilon said.
LP acting president Francis Pangilinan said reimposing the death penalty will not lead to more convictions, nor will it ensure that cases will be decided swiftly and the guilty punished.
He said the death penalty will not address lawlessness and criminality when convictions are few and cases drag on for years.
He said modernizing the justice system, not the death penalty, is the key to end lawlessness and criminality.
“It is swift punishment and the immediate disposition of cases pending before our courts, regardless of penalties involved, and not the reimposition of death penalty, that will restore respect for the rule of law in the country,” he said.