Extrajudicial Killings and Forced Disappearances in The Philippines - Nature

Nature

Philippine extrajudicial killings are politically motivated murders committed by government officers, punished by local and international law or convention. They include assassinations; deaths due to strafing or indiscriminate firing; massacre; summary execution is done if the victim becomes passive before the moment of death (i.e., abduction leading to death); assassination means forthwith or instant killing while massacre is akin to genocide or mass extermination; thus, killings occurred in many regions or places throughout the Philippines in different times - 136 killings in Southern Tagalog region were recorded by human rights group Karapatan from 2001 to May 19, 2006.

A forced disappearance (desaparecidos), on the other hand, as form of extrajudicial punishment is perpetrated by government officers, when any of its public officers abducts an individual, to vanish from public view, resulting to murder or plain sequestration. The victim is first kidnapped, then illegally detained in concentration camps, often tortured, and finally executed and the corpse hidden. In Spanish and Portuguese, "disappeared people" are called desaparecidos, a term which specifically refers to the mostly South American victims of state terrorism during the 1970s and the 1980s, in particular concerning Operation Condor. In the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, "Enforced disappearance" is defined in Article 2 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture as "the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law."

Even if Philippine Republic Act No. 7438 provides for the rights of persons arrested, detained, it does not punish acts of enforced disappearances. Thus, on August 27, Bayan Muna (People First), Gabriela Women's Party (GWP), and Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) filed House Bill 2263 - “An act defining and penalizing the crime of enforced or involuntary disappearance.” Sen. Jinggoy Estrada also filed last June 30, 2007, Senate Bill No. 7 - “An Act Penalizing the Commission of Acts of Torture and Involuntary Disappearance of Persons Arrested, Detained or Under Custodial Investigation, and Granting Jurisdiction to the Commission on Human Rights to Conduct Preliminary Investigation for Violation of the Custodial Rights of the Accused, Amending for this Purpose Sections 2, 3 and 4 of RA 7438, and for Other Purposes.”

For extrajudicial executions see also Assassination