Philippine human rights groups and left-wing politicians yesterday expressed skepticism about plans to establish special tribunals to try people suspected of carrying out extrajudicial killings.
"The announcement comes at a time when the government is under intense international pressure to end the killings," Ruth Cervantes spokeswoman for human rights group Karapatan told reporters. "There were no details and [the court] appears to have been made to appease the government's critics."
On Thursday the country's chief justice, Reynato Puno, told a UN human rights investigator the tribunals would be established within a week.
Prominent left-wing legislator and former communist leader, Satur Ocampo, cautiously welcomed the announcement saying: "to make these special courts work, President [Gloria] Arroyo must first end the policy of abetting, encouraging and sanctioning political killings."
Puno made the announcement shortly after he met with the UN Human Rights Commission's special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Philip Alston, who is in the country to investigate the murders.
Karapatan has listed 832 alleged summary killings, including the deaths of 356 left-wing activists from Bayan Muna, since Arroyo came to power in 2001.
Human rights groups have said the military is behind many of the deaths. The government has disputed the figures and says communist rebels are killing their own people as part of a purge.
A fact-finding commission headed by former supreme court justice, Jose Melo, last year has concluded the military was to blame for many of the killings.
The president has refused to make the report public as it is "incomplete and at this point, inconclusive."
Arroyo spokesman Ignacio Bunye meanwhile hailed relatives of the victims for coming out in the open to talk to Alston, something which he said they refused to do before the Melo's commission.
"This will complete the picture that the Melo Commission could not understandably achieve in view of the refusal of the families to testify before the probe body," Bunye said in a statement.
Cervantes of Karapatan said the victims' relatives refused to testify before the government-appointed commission because they felt "intimidated."
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