House asked to reject proposal reinstating death penalty

MANILA, Philippines - International rights advocates urged the House of Representatives to reject a proposal to reinstate the death penalty.

In a joint letter issued over the weekend, the International Drug Policy Consortium urged all members of the House and Senate to uphold the right to life enshrined in the 1987 Constitution.

The consortium also reminded Congress that the Philippines is also a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and to the Second Optional Protocol of the ICCPR on the abolishment of the death penalty.

This came after the House judicial reforms subcommittee approved on Nov. 29 House Bill No. 1 or the proposed Death Penalty Law.

The measure will reinstate capital punishment for heinous crimes such as murder, piracy and trafficking and possession of illegal drugs. A House vote on the bill is likely before the end of 2016.

But Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said the Philippine government should acknowledge the death penalty’s barbarity and reject any moves to reinstate it. He also noted that the failure of death penalty as a crime deterrent is globally recognized and the government should maintain the prohibition on its use.

“Reinstating the death penalty would violate the Philippines’ international legal obligations. The Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR states that ‘no one within the jurisdiction of a State Party to the present Protocol shall be executed’ and that ‘each State Party shall take all necessary measures to abolish the death penalty within its jurisdiction’,” he said. 

“Where the death penalty is permitted, human rights law limits the death penalty to ‘the most serious crimes,’ typically crimes resulting in death or serious bodily harm,” he added.

The Philippine government abolished the death penalty under Article III, Section 19 of the 1987 Constitution. Former president Fidel Ramos reimposed the death penalty in 1993 as a “crime control” measure, but former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo abolished it again in 2006.

HRW said the deterrent effect of the death penalty has been repeatedly debunked.

“Most recently, on March 4, 2015, the United Nations assistant secretary-general for human rights Ivan Simonovic stated that there was ‘no evidence that the death penalty deters any crime.’ Even with respect to murder, an Oxford University analysis concluded that capital punishment does not deter murder to a marginally greater extent than does the threat and application of the supposedly lesser punishment of life imprisonment,” HRW said.

In a March 2010 report, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime also called for an end to the death penalty and specifically urged member-countries to prohibit use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses, while urging countries to take an overall “human rights-based approach to drug and crime control.”

“The UN Human Rights Committee and the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions have concluded that the death penalty for drug offenses fails to meet the condition of ‘most serious crime’,” Kine said.

“Reinstatement of the death penalty won’t solve any drug-related societal problems that Congress House Bill No. 1 seeks to address. It will only add to the already horrific death toll that President Duterte’s war on drugs has inflicted on Filipinos since he took office on June 30,” he added.