A Statement from the Hong Kong Campaign for the Advancement of Human Rights and Peace in the Philippines ( HKCAHRPP ) forwarded by the Asian Human Rights Commission
The Hong Kong Campaign for the Advancement of Human Rights and Peace in the Philippines (HKCAHRPP) is alarmed to just learn that two more human rights defenders in the Philippines are being harassed by unidentified men claiming to be members of the military—a pattern of harassment that has escalated under the administration of President Benigno S. Aquino.
In this latest case, Raquel L. Toquero, national organizer of the Confederation for Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (COURAGE), and her husband Mervin H. Toquero, the acting program secretary of the Program Unit on Faith, Witness and Service of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), were eating breakfast at their home in Cavite with their three children and preparing to attend church on June 28, 2015. At about 8:00 a.m., two men claiming to be soldiers suddenly appeared at their kitchen door asking for Raquel. They refused to show their identification cards or the orders of their mission. According to a statement of the NCCP, they said that “they wanted to talk to Raquel for they know what she has been doing and they want to help her.” The NCCP statement adds that “they handed her a paper with the name Delia and the numbers 09261430628 written on it. Then they left hurriedly.”
What Raquel “has been doing” is fighting for workers to enjoy their rights and receive decent wages, which COURAGE contends should be a national monthly minimum wage of 16,000 pesos per month, or about US$350, for private as well as public workers. Since April 2015, COURAGE union officers and organizers have faced more than 20 similar incidents like this one involving Raquel and Mervin Toquero. Naturally, the Toquero family is concerned about their safety in an environment like the Philippines in which human rights violations are rampant but perpetrators are free and justice is absent, i.e., impunity is the standard operating procedure of the government and the justice system. Indeed, human rights defenders in the Philippines who have similar experiences to those of the Toquero family are far too often the victims of even more serious human rights violations, including arrest on falsified charges, extrajudicial killings and disappearances.
It is in this context that HKCAHRP calls on the Philippine government to stop its harassment of those who seek to defend the constitutional and international human rights of themselves and others in society. The war against human rights defenders in the Philippines and against the poor must end now.
