SEN. Risa Hontiveros yesterday filed a proposed measure seeking to protect human rights defenders and impose punishment on any threats made against them.
Senate Bill No. 2447 was filed by the opposition senator as the country marked the 51st declaration of Martial Law by the late President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., a period marked by human rights abuses targeting activists and human rights workers.
“This bill seeks to guarantee the protection of the rights and fundamental freedoms of human rights defenders, specify the obligations of the State to ensure the enjoyment of these rights and freedoms, and impose appropriate sanctions to counter impunity,” Hontiveros said on the bill’s explanatory note.
Among the rights and freedoms the proposed Human Rights Defenders Protection Act seeks to protect, promote and respect are the right to protect and promote human rights and fundamental freedoms, the right to form groups, associations, or organizations, the right to peaceful assembly, the right to seek, receive and disseminate information, right to privacy, right to develop and advocate human rights ideas, right to solicit, receive and utilize resources, right to access, communicate and cooperate with international and regional human rights bodies, right to effective remedy and full reparation, and freedom from intimidation, threats and reprisal as well as freedom of movement.
Hontiveros said the rights of human rights defenders must be fully recognized since they are “fundamental anchors of our democratic society.”
“The mission to protect those who defend our human rights must persist,” she stressed.
If enacted into law, the proposed legislation would prohibit public officials from making “false, unfounded and derogatory labeling of human rights defenders, including identifying them or tagging them as “Reds, communists, enemies of the State or terrorists.”
Hontiveros said the proposed measure would impose the penalty of prision mayor in its maximum period to reclusion temporal in its medium period without the privilege of parole if the violator is a government personnel or the whole complement of the government unit, the paramilitary personnel or the whole paramilitary unit, the government asset and or the military affiliate.
Prision mayor refers to a prison term ranging from six years and one day to 12 years imprisonment while reclusion temporal is a prison term ranging from 12 years and one day to 20 years.
The proposed measure would also impose prision mayor or a P100,000 fine, or both, at the discretion of the court to any government official or personnel who would destroy, alter, or falsify records and documents relative to any matter involving human rights defenders, or the activities of human rights organizations.
The proposed legislation would also oblige the national government to investigate whenever a human rights defender is reported missing, arbitrarily detained, tortured, threatened, or killed.
