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Opinion

What about the victims' human rights

WHAT MATTERS MOST - Atty. Josephus B. Jimenez - The Freeman

If Senator Leila de Lima is a genuine advocate for human rights, why is she too daring in her defense for criminals and drug offenders, while choosing to remain mum on the many victims of murders, rapes and kipnappings? If the human rights activists are ever mindful of the human rights of suspected drug lords, and of those where there are compelling evidence of guilt, how about the rights of the victims? It is quite easy, even convenient for the so-called human rights advocates to condemn the police and the military. But they seem to close their eyes to the fact that many policemen and armed forces personnel have also been victimized of terroristic attacks and atrocities.

Why is it that when people start talking of summary killings, the accusing fingers are always pointed at the authorities? Why is the government always deemed the usual suspect and ultimately declared the guilty party? Why are extra-judicial killings always blamed on those who are in power? Aren't the terrorists, the vigilantes, and those who have axes to grind also capable of summary executions, as their own form of unorthodox instrument of justice? Should we then allow our police and military officers and men to be murdered and massacred, without defending themselves?

Why is it too convenient for the likes of Senators de Lima and Trillanes to take hook, line and sinker, the outrageous and even preposterous tales of a highly questionable witness, who confessed unabashedly that he has been a cold-blooded serial killer, involved personally in the carnage of many human beings? And, why are these two honorable members of the Senate  always looking at General Ronald "Bato" de la Rosa,  with determined bias and prejudice, and all uniformed officers and men as the enemies of the people, instead of being their protectors and defenders ?

If and when drug lords, dealers, pushers, users or addicts are being killed in legitimate police operations, why are red and yellow activists too quick in raising howls of protests, while remaining mysteriously silent and seemingly impervious, when young and innocent girls are being raped, by neighborhood addicts ? Yes, innocent and defenseless Filipinos are being robbed, kidnapped, mugged, tortured, terrorized and slaughtered in broad daylights, and in the presence and sight of terrified, bewildered and cowering people? Why do we have a double standard of justice?

What's happening to us? Have become too cynical, skeptical and callous? Why is there no more space in our minds to accommodate that possibility that victims of mysterious deaths have summarily executed by their own personal enemies and not by the police?  Why do mass media, both print and broadcast, always poised to lay the blame on the authorities and not exercise due diligence in seeking for the true criminals ? Faced with a cruel twist of irony, Shakespeare, in Mark Anthony, cried "Oh, judgment, thou art fled to brutish beast, and men have lost their reason". I thus pause, like the poet, for any reply.

[email protected].

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