Jose Luis Marti “Chito” Gascon should go back to school to know the exact definition of human rights and examine the role of the Commission on Human Rights where he stands as chairman. By knowing both, he would realize that the issue has become political than judicial. In fact, it was only recently when the country ratified our membership with the International Criminal Court (ICC) where we stupidly committed ourselves to surrender any of our accused leaders to be tried by the European-based ICC for alleged war crimes.
To date, the ICC has yet to delineate the fine distinction between war crimes and human rights violations. Worse, it is doubtful whether individuals or front organizations can directly bring their case before the international tribunal without the approval of the UN Security Council. Worse, to allow the ICC, which is made up mostly of countries that committed the greatest barbarity, plunder, exploitation, mass murder, and have enslaved the people in the continents of Africa and Latin America, would be the height of folly in human civilization. We would be licensing the most ruthless imperialist powers to set aside the sovereignty that guarantees the freedom and independence of states today.
Nonetheless, to secure international support, the CHR invited European meddlers disguised as rapporteurs to make a slanted report of alleged violation of human rights in the Philippines without Chairman Gascon, who incidentally is a lawyer, raising reservations. Anybody can be accused of violating human rights, but as far as our laws are concerned, they can only be charged for other offenses. They can be charged for homicide, serious physical injuries, illegal or arbitrary detention, illegal search and violation of domicile much that we have yet to enact a law on that. The trouble with Gascon and his cabal foreign stooge is that they insist on using that term because charging our law enforcement authorities and soldiers would automatically give political color to their objective. That, then, would give them a license to destroy the credibility of the Duterte administration.
By attributing all acts as committed by the state, they thought it as wise to label them as human rights violators. The highly partisan CHR gives so much political value to its cause that it has become the most effective proxy propagandist of the US and the monopolists. It has become the most effective tool of the yellow oligarchy, the double-dealing militant Left, the obscurantist clerics, and the mainstream media to pounce on the elected leader resentful to their policies, just like what they did to Marcos. In fact, Gascon, like Senator De Lima, is so ecstatic because his yellow horde would be able to get their much-needed recognition to destroy President Duterte and hopefully install their bogus vice-president.
They would not mind if in their desperate attempt to regain power, they would be plunging the country to possible civil war. The thrust is to interpret the defensive act of the state, as “state-sponsored crimes.” By their idiotic incorporation of human rights provisions in our Constitution, they, in effect, opened the floodgates to openly slander our government which these idiots swore as allegedly “free” and “democratic.” It never crossed their mind that most of today’s cases of human rights violation are tailored to harass, discredit and bring down governments unwilling to bow down to the pressure of the US and the monopolists. This explains why the Commission on Human Rights and all non-governmental organizations pretending to hold aloft that banner enjoy the enormous funding from foreign NGOs and intelligence agencies. Their assignment is to pressure the government to persuade or dissuade its policies according to the wishes of their funder.
This soft approach is no different from the US Military Assistance Agreement—that to get our badly needed arms, we have to act and behave according to what they want us to do. That means our own law-enforcing authorities, including our Armed Forced, now have a “fifth column” jostling to push them to the ravine. This explains why up to now, Gascon and his cabal of hypocrites have not filed a single case against the communist rebels, the Muslim secessionist, and even against the Islamic terrorists. Curiously enough, the same local mongrels crying human rights violations remain silent if it happens that the head of government is living up to his role as their property custodian and interrogator. Thus, any violence which would constitute a violation of human rights is either ignored or they just look the other way as if nothing happened. The glaring instance was the Mamasapano massacre that happened during the lackluster Noynoy Aquino administration.
The siege in Marawi City is another instance which these mongrels are also trying to exploit. President Duterte blew his top and threatened to abolish the CHR because he felt the CHR wanted to encroach on his duty by doing the most demoralizing job of investigating the members of the police and the Armed Forces that were sent to restore order in that besieged city. The President reacted because the CHR considers it as an act of human rights violation when the civilians were ordered to vacate their houses to clear the area for military operations.
Even assuming that many civilians were killed, injured and displaced, their houses burned or destroyed because of the firefight that lasted for several days, nonetheless the CHR should have focused on who initiated the violence, and not on how to preserve human rights. If these idiots focused on that issue, logic will tell them that the act constituting the violation began on those who initiated the violence. That is where human rights violation began, and not on how the government reacted.
The imposition of martial law was only a reaction. By itself, it can never constitute a violation of human rights. Gascon should have known it better that the violence inflicted by the government was an exempting circumstance designed to restore order, not to retaliate. If an act of self-defense is accepted in criminal law, how much more to a legitimate force doing its sacred duty of defending the people and restoring order to preserve human lives? Maybe the President is right that it is high time for us to abolish the CHR. It has become a wayward commission so jaundiced in its perception that it could not comprehend that the right of the state to defend itself is far more superior that only by its existence can it proceed to uphold human rights.
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