UN Calls On Philippines to Protect Human Rights Defenders

July 10, 2012

UN Independent Experts Call On Philippines to Protect Human Rights Defenders

New York, Jul 9 2012 – Two United Nations independent experts called on the Government of the Philippines to urgently adopt measures to protect human rights defenders and investigate the increasing number of threats and killings targeting them over the past months.

“A number of cases have been reported to our mandates involving death threats and, in the worst of cases, killings of human rights defenders since the killing of Fr. Fausto Tenorio in Mindanao last year,” the Special Rapporteurs on human rights defenders and extrajudicial killings, Margaret Sekaggya and Christof Heyns, respectively, said in a news release.

Mr. Tenorio was an Italian missionary who was killed on 17 October last year, reportedly for his efforts in helping indigenous people assert their rights to ancestral lands.

In particular, the experts expressed dismay about the case of Francisco Canayong, who was stabbed to death in Salcedo, Eastern Visayas, on 1 May. The authorities had been alerted of death threats against him and other human rights defenders a few weeks before the killing.

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