March 14, 2007: Philippines Human Rights Senate Hearing. Reportback and video link.

I just returned from Washington D.C. where I attended the International Ecumenical Conference on Human Rights in the Philippines and the Senate Hearing on Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines. Many of you have attended some of our educational forums on this subject, received our emails, helped us to write letters, publicized and spread the word. Thank you! It has been such an exciting time since PANA has gotten involved with this issue at the Human Rights Day “ People’s Worship” or “Pagsambang Bayan” in Daly City on Dec. 10, 2006. Little did we realize that there was a powerful convergence of forces and Spirit about to take place. Bishop Eli Pascua and Rev. Tess Vertucio from the United Church of Christ Philippines spent one month in Northern California speaking at numerous venues about the issue; 17 members of the United Methodist Cal-Nevada conference were sent on a fact-finding trip to the Philippines in mid-February; during this trip, the U.N. Rapporteur, Philip Alston, issued his report on the Extra-judicial killings implicating the military, and then the Philippine's government finally released the conclusions of their own Melo Commission report which also pointed to the military as responsible for the killings.

In February, we began a flurry of legislative visits in Northern California with the strong participation of several Filipino-American pastors and community leaders; Our target had been Senator Boxer with the request of an official on-the-congressional-record Senate hearing in her new post as chair of the Asia Pacific subcommitee of the International Relations Committee. We had wanted this hearing to be March 12-14 when the delegation of religious and NGO leaders from the Philippines would be in DC to offer firsthand testimony. It was a bold request on a tight deadline and so we were not totally surprised despite our flurry of efforts when her office said “No.” But the activity did not cease, and on Thursday, March 8, 2007, just 4 days before the beginning of the Philippine’s Human Rights conference they changed their mind and said “Yes!” All those letters, the newspaper articles, the hundred of people with whom Bishop Pascua and Rev. Vertucio talked and met all over Northern California and Nevada, a significant letter by Rev. Bob Edgars, Pres. of the National Council of Churches, the work of many staff and lawyers working in the ecumenical denominational offices and D.C. law offices lobbying the aides and staffers- all put together worked! All of these activities and voices across the country and internationally converged. Every connection counted! I can remember a form letter to Barbara Boxer signed by a PSR alum who attended one of the educational forums. He wrote at the bottom in his own handwriting: "I met you at a wedding I officiated, please look into this serious matter."

So the official Hearing on Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines was “ON” for March 14th- a victory in itself. But that was just the beginning of a dramatic few days leading up to the hearing. Within a span of less then a week, the Philippine government raided the home and sought to arrest leftist Philippine Senator Satur Ocampo as part of their political crackdown. He in turn announced that he was on his way to travel to D.C. to testify at the Hearing creating quite a stir. It was not really true, but a tactic to seek protection for himself- and it in turn put a lot of attention on the Hearings. Then, a day later, the Philippine's government and newspaper headlines read that the top two Military Generals and two Chief of Police were on their way to Washington D.C. to attend the hearings to “observe” and clarify "truth from propaganda." This audacity of the Philippine government significantly raised the tension and level of concern for the Philippine delegates at the conference, particularly, because during the span of the 3 day conference, 2 more activists were killed in the Philippines.

Fortunately, Senator Boxer’s office made it clear that there would be no intimidation or fear at the hearing and that Philippine Military and Police were not allowed to be at the hearing. (Whew!) Instead, the Philippine embassy attended and submitted a written report to represent the government’s views- a much more appropriate diplomatic response than sending the military!

During the hearing itself- Senator Boxer was brilliant and tenacious in challenging the State Department’s claims that the Philippines was a vibrant democracy, taking adequate measure to address the killings, painting a rosy picture of the situation. The others who testified were T. Kumar from Amnesty International, G. Eugene Martin from the Philippine Facilitation Project/U.S. Peace Institute, Bishop Eliezer Pascua from the United Church of Christ Philippines and Marie Hilao-Enriquez from KARAPATAN, a human rights group in the Philippines.

You can see the live footage of the hearing at the following link: http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/2007/hrg070314p.html. (You may need to skip ahead 20 minutes for the actual start of the hearing.)
-Rev. Deborah Lee