Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances in The Philippines

Extrajudicial killings and Enforced disappearances in the Philippines
Extrajudicial Killings
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) defines
extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions as the “deprivation of life without full judicial and legal
process, and with the involvement, complicity, tolerance or acquiescence of the Government or its agents.”
The terms also include “death through the excessive use of force by police or security forces.”
Specifically, extrajudicial executions ,also synonymous with the term "extralegal killings" (ELKs)
are those “executions or deaths caused intentionally by the attacks or killings by State security forces or
paramilitary groups, death squads or other private forces cooperating with the State or tolerated by it.”
In the Philippines, the term “extrajudicial killings” does not have a clear definition. In Secretary v.
Manalo, the Supreme Court, citing the Rule on the Writ of Amparo, opined that extralegal killings are
“killings committed without due process of law, i.e., without legal safeguards or judicial proceedings.
“However, the latter case of Razon Jr. v. Tagitis revealed that the drafters of Amparo rule decided to “do
away with [the] clear textual definition of [extrajudicial killings].” Despite this, the Court recognized in
Razon, Jr. that “extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, by their nature and purpose, constitute
State or private party violation of the constitutional rights of individuals to life, liberty and security.”
In 2013, Administrative Order No. 35 provided a rather restrictive definition of extrajudicial or extra-
legal killings as killings wherein the victim was a:
(i) a member of, or affiliated with an organization, to include political, environmental, agrarian,
labor, or similar causes; or
(ii) an advocate of above-named causes; or
(iii) a media practitioner or
(iv) person(s) apparently mistaken or identified to be so.”
It further stated that the victim was targeted by either State or non-State agents by reason of actual
of perceived membership, advocacy, or profession, and that the circumstances of the killing reveal a
deliberate intent to kill.
Forced Disappearance
A forced disappearance (desaparecidos), on the other hand, as form of extrajudicial punishment

is perpetrated by government officers, when any of its public officers abducts an individual, to vanish from
public view, resulting to murder or plain sequestration. The victim is first kidnapped, then illegally
detained in concentration camps, often tortured, and finally executed and the corpse hidden. In Spanish
and Portuguese, "disappeared people" are called desaparecidos, a term which specifically refers to the
mostly South American victims of state terrorism during the 1970s and the 1980s, in particular concerning
Operation Condor.
In the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance,
"Enforced disappearance" is defined in Article 2 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture as "the
arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons
or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a
refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the
disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law."
Enforced Disappearance and Extrajudicial Execution: Investigation and Sanction: A Practitioners Guide, International Commission
of Jurists, 2015 p. 66 (citing Human Rights and Law Enforcement - A Manual for Human Rights Training for the Police, Professional
Training Series No. 5/Add.2, 2004, Index HR/P/PT/5/Add.2, p. 15) available at http://icj.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/12/Universal-Enforced-Disappearance-andExtrajudicial-Execution-PGNo9-Publications-Practitioners-
guide-series-2015-ENG.pdf (last accessed Sept. 19 2016)
3 Secretary of Defense v. Manalo, G.R. No. 180906, Oct. 7, 2008.
14 Razon, Jr. v. Tagitis, G.R. No. 182498, Dec. 3, 2009.
Department of Justice, Operational Guidelines of Administrative Order No. 35, art. I (1) (Apr. 18, 2013)
SUMMARY & EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS IN THE PHILIPPINES A Submission to the United Nations Human
Rights Council for the Universal Periodic Review of the Philippines (3rd Cycle, 27th Session, 2017)

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Extrajudicial killings and Enforced disappearances in the Philippines

A forced disappearance (desaparecidos), on the other hand, as form of extrajudicial punishment

3 Secretary of Defense v. Manalo, G.R. No. 180906, Oct. 7, 2008.

14 Razon, Jr. v. Tagitis, G.R. No. 182498, Dec. 3, 2009.

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