Gutsy human rights team does its work in UNHRC

Note: I yield this space to the Ecumenical Voice for Human Rights and Peace in the Philippines (EcuVoice) delegation to the ongoing (43rd session in Geneva of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Here’s its account (edited for limited space) on how it carries out its mission as UN-recognized partner and actor on human rights issues. The 44th session in June 2020 is expected to tackle a comprehensive written report on the Philippine situation by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, to whose office EcuVoice has submitted 16 documentations.

GENEVA, Switzerland – Bayan Muna Rep. Eufemia Cullamat is usually the first to wake up, at about 4 a.m., in this chilly city. She immediately takes a shower to avoid the rush to the bathroom once other EcuVoice delegates – cramped in every available sleeping space at a generous Filipino’s home – wake up.

For the team’s breakfast, Cullamat scrambles eggs and fries leftover rice. While waiting for dawn, she prepares for the rest of the day by writing down her talking points when she meets ambassadors, country mission representatives, UN special rapporteurs/experts and their officers, and a host of international NGOs, one after the other.

Invariably, the team brings home-cooked food, with leftover steamed or fried rice, to be heated in the golden microwave of the UN canteen. For today’s lunch, they will feast on scrambled eggs and spicy canned sardines handcarried from Manila. When they are lucky, Filipino migrants and foreign friends foot the bill for their supper at a modest restaurant. Or they “patak-patak” (pitch in): from each according to his/her pocket money, to each according to his/her appetite.

When the team finally leaves for the Palais des Nations (the UN offices and facilities in Geneva), Cullamat struggles with the many layers of clothes she had to put on to fight off the chill. Walking to the bus stop, she thinks of her beloved Surigao del Sur mountains to keep the cold out of her mind. She would do this again at night and it is time to go back to their living quarters, taking two tram rides, one bus trip, and a short yet lonely walk.

Cullamat is in her second week of attending meetings and observing the 43rd Session of the UN Human Rights Council. Exuding humility despite being a nationally elected official, the UN experts and the diplomats are surprised when she is introduced as an incumbent parliamentarian back home. They see no trace of arrogance and smugness that one may expect from both elected and appointed officials.

But more surprising is what “Ka Femia” has to say to those whom the EcuVoice delegates meet with, inside and outside the sprawling UN compound. She tells them that despite being a member of the Philippine Congress, the military hasn’t stopped accusing her of being a supporter of so-called terrorist groups. She tells them her husband has been in jail simply for defending their ancestral land from destructive mining. She informs them, in her gentle and shy voice, that the Lumad in Mindanao are being driven away and killed for fighting for their right to self-determination. She decries the government’s closure of all Lumad schools and the brutal killing inside one school of its administrator.

It is not only Cullamat who moves many to tears here. Nanay Llore Pasco never fails to bring out a photo of her two sons, who were killed by suspected police officers operating under the Rodrigo Duterte government’s anti-drug war campaign, “Oplan Tokhang.” Her sons Crisanto Antonio, 34, and Juan Carlos, 31, were both killed in 2017 and their bodies were found dumped within the University of the Philippines Arboretum in Quezon City. She shares the pain of her loss and the further grief of not seeing justice after two years of police inaction.

Soft-spoken Clarissa Ramos makes UN experts and diplomats sit up when she starts narrating how her lawyer husband Benjamin was killed in cold blood, after being red-tagged by the military in their home island of Negros. She recalls how he defended the farmers from various forms of injustices, for which he was targeted for assassination. A young mother, Clarissa has been separated from her four children (since being widowed) to keep them safe from harm.

Three church workers have joined the EcuVoice team: Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI) Bishop Antonio Ablon, whose life has been repeatedly threatened by the military; Rev.Fr. June Mark Yanez, whose church denomination has been vilified for fulfilling its prophetic mission; and Johanna dela Cruz, a worker of the National Council of Churches of the Philippines (NCCP), which the Philippine military claims supports so-called terrorists.

Also with the team are Clemente Bautista of the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment, who spoke before the Council about the Philippines being one of the most dangerous countries for environmental defenders; and Raymund Villanueva, a journalist, who hands out posters calling for the freedom of his community-broadcasting trainee, Frenchie Mae Cumpio. She was arrested in Tacloban City last February and slapped with a trumped-up charge of illegal possession of firearms and explosives.

Navigating for the EcuVoice team are two veterans of engagements at the UNHRC: National Union of People’s Lawyers president and concurrent interim president of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers Edre U. Olalia, and Karapatan secretary-general Cristina Palabay. Along with dela Cruz and Bautista, Olalia and Palabay spoke before the general debate in the UNHRC. Both pointedly debunked the Philippine government’s denials that human rights violations are widespread back home.

All the eight members of the EcuVoice delegation or their respective organizations have been smeared, labelled, vilified, red-tagged, and subjected to hate speech, both in Geneva and back home, by their own government officials.

“The government is mistaken in thinking their denials have any currency among both member- and observer-countries of the UNHRC. It is also mistaken in thinking its attacks on the UN system and EcuVoice’s presence here is beneficial to the reputation of the Philippine government,” Olalia remarked. “No one believes that the blood flowing in our streets and the bodies filling our jails are merely imagined,” he added.

On her part, Palabay said: “What we do here in Geneva entails a lot of sacrifice, including being away from our families and at risk of reprisals. But we do it in the hope that, with the help of the international community, the wanton violations of our rights and freedoms in the Philippines would be abated, if not stopped. We are here, we fight our fear, get used to it.”

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