Johannesburg. 24 October 2011. CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation strongly condemns the killing of Father FaustoTentorio, an Italian priest in the North Cotabato region of the Philippines on 17 October 2011. According to CIVICUS partner Karapatan, an alliance of human rights organisations in the Philippines, Fr. Tentorio is the 54th victim of extra-judicial killings since President Benigno Aquino III came into power in June 2010.
Fr.Tentorio worked for over three decades among the indigenous people in the Cotabato area advocating for indigenous people's land rights against the incursions of big business, especially by mining corporations. He was outspoken against military presence in the villages and was involved in exposing deliberate attempts to marginalise indigenous people by powerful individuals acting in complicity with state agencies. He also blamed the security forces for being tools for suppression of people's rights.
Criticising the assassination of Fr.Tentorio by unidentified persons astride a motorcycle, Jigs Clamor, Deputy Secretary General of Karapatan, has urged the President Aquino to take strict action to end the killings of civil society members. "The President can no longer cover up the increasing number of human rights violations under his administration. Blaming the previous regime will not divert people's attention from his government's own accountability for the continuing rule of impunity in the country."In the Philippines, signature style assassinations of civil society members by killers astride motorcycles are continuing with frightening regularity. Pro-government militias and members of the security forces who accuse community-based activists of being aligned with leftist rebels are widely believed to be behind these assassinations.
"The military must stop the labelling and targeting of human rights defenders as 'enemies of the state' and should be reminded that the Philippine Government has a responsibility to uphold its international human rights obligations by bringing to justice the perpetrators and openly condemning the killing of innocent and unarmed civilians" said Ingrid Srinath, Secretary General of CIVICUS.
CIVICUS and Karapatan call on the government of the Philippines to immediately (i) stop the implementation of its counter-insurgency program OplanBayanihan under which extra-judicial killings and other gross and systematic violations of human rights have taken place and, (ii) ensure an immediate and impartial investigations and prosecution of those involved in the killing of Fr. FaustoTentorio and previous assassinations of civil society members in the country.