THE PHILIPPINES ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1986, reinforcing its commitment to promote and protect civil and political rights, including the right to life as enshrined in Article 6 of the ICCPR.
In 2006, the Philippines became a signatory to the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR and on Nov. 20, 2007 we ratified the Second Optional Protocol — which explicitly, absolutely, and permanently prohibits the imposition of death penalty in the Philippines.
In her report to the United Nations Human Rights Council this June 2020, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said restoring the death penalty for drug-related offenses would breach the obligations of the Philippines under international human rights law.
But more than that, the reimposition of death penalty in a deeply flawed criminal justice system is essentially a legislative fiat to the current spate of extrajudicial killings, which mostly affect the poor who have far less or no access to resources to defend themselves before courts.
In the context of a bankrupt and corrupt justice system that favors the moneyed and the powerful, death penalty will only increase the prevalence of impunity against the poor. Under such a system, the death penalty is a violation of the right to life and the absolute prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment.
Death penalty could also significantly impact on human rights defenders, activists and political dissenters, when the exercise of political beliefs and political actions that seek to institute meaningful and comprehensive reforms and change is criminalized. Almost all political prisoners are charged with trumped up offenses such as murder, destructive arson, kidnapping, carnapping, and recently, drug-related charges, to hide the political nature of their arrest and detention and to stigmatize them as “criminals”.
According to human rights alliance Karapatan, majority of political prisoners were slapped with fabricated murder cases, arrested and detained through John/Jane Doe and alias warrants, the spurious filing of cases with defective warrants and perjured testimonies of hired witnesses by the military and common practice of planting evidence.
Death penalty in a bankrupt criminal justice system will not curb nor eliminate crimes in the country. Only when the underlying causes of crimes are dealt with significant and comprehensive social, economic, and political reforms that uphold people’s rights and welfare can crimes be reduced or eliminated.
