Human Rights Violations In The Philippines

RIEF HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN THE PHILIPPINES

Human Rights in the Philippines, or the absence of these rights, are better understood through the prism of colonialism. Over the last 400 years the Filipino people have suffered numerous human rights violations as early as the Spanish colonialism and then further during the American imperialism and Japanese invasion. [ ] Under the Spanish, American and Japanese colonialism, many nationalists were killed solely for advocating Philippine independence.

Less than a century after foreign administration, Filipinos continued to deny, limit or infringe upon the rights of their countrymen. With the declaration of Martial Law in 1972, human rights violations were institutionalized as an integral element of the political control strategy of the Marcos dictatorship. President Marcos imposed martial law and suspended habeas corpus throughout the Philippines, which facilitated widespread abuses by the military and other security forces, including detention without charge, torture, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings.

The 1987 Philippine Constitution, which was drafted after Marcos’s overthrow during “People Power” revolution in 1986, places restrictions on the proclamation of martial law and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, as well as on their implementation.

A state of martial law does not suspend the Constitution, nor replace the functioning of the civil courts or Congress. It only permits