📷: KARAPATAN | FB
“While efforts to create a diligent and science-based system in the investigation of extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations are important, let us not lose sight of the fact that for years, the justice system itself has failed the victims of such crimes. In the context of continuing killings and impunity under Marcos Jr., the National Forensics Institute (NFI) is viewed as a cosmetic gimmick that does not render substantive justice for the victims nor does it give meaningful assurance on the non-repetition of human rights violations,” said Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay, who is currently co-heading a delegation of human rights defenders at the UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva, Switzerland.
Yesterday, the Philippine Department of Justice launched the NFI in Manila, as UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings Morris Tidball-Binz delivered a report on the rights of families of victims of extrajudicial killings at the UNHRC session.
“As long as the repressive policies such as Marcos’ National Security Policy and National Action Plan for Unity, Peace and Development exist and as government bodies such as the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict continues their murderous campaigns, extrajudicial killings have continued and will continue to be committed with impunity,” added Palabay.
Karapatan stated the recent spate of extrajudicial killings in Eastern Visayas and the continuous harassment by police and National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agents of families of victims of the 2021 Bloody Sunday Massacre in a desperate effort to convince them not to file cases.
In Borongan, Eastern Samar, elements of the 63rd Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army (IBPA) indiscriminately fired at a 16-year old student known as Jayson while the latter was working in their family farm with another minor. Jayson is reportedly the seventh peasant killed by state troops in the last 12 months in different areas of Samar. He is also the fourth minor killed since the 20th IBPA strafed two underage copra farmers in Catubig, Northern Samar in February 2022. A two-year old was also shot to death with his grandfather by the 63rd IBPA in San Jose de Buan, Samar in 2023.
To justify the killing and evade accountability, the 63rd IBPA falsely claimed that Jayson was killed in an armed encounter in Sitio Bagong Barrio, Barangay Pinanag-an on June 15, 2025. None of the perpetrators has been punished.
Recent incidents involving relatives of victims in the Bloody Sunday massacre of nine Southern Tagalog activists killed in March 2021 likewise show that State security forces routinely intimidate families of victims of extrajudicial killings to dissuade them from pursuing accountability. In June 2025, families of Dumagat farmers Randy and Puroy dela Cruz were harassed and pressured by elements from the Philippine National Police to cancel their plans to file charges against military and police personnel involved in the killing of two. Relatives of urban poor activists Greg Dasigao and Mark Lee Bacasno were likewise alarmed at unwarranted visits from the National Bureau of Investigation.
“We call on the international community to see beyond the blinders put in place by the Marcos Jr. administration, and to join us in the efforts to demand genuine justice and accountability. The opinion that Marcos is a lesser evil than Duterte, and therefore a more believable implementer of human rights-centered governance with his PR gimmicks, is built on lies and a deliberate attempt to disregard the systemic and policy-driven causes of extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations,” Palabay said.#
