Why Withdraw? Media Explain IPU Role

Screengrab from ABS-CBN News YouTube account.

CHEERS TO ANC’s Dateline Philippines and the Philippine Daily Inquirer for going beyond reporting the reactions of members of Congress to House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s proposal that the Philippines withdraw from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). By providing needed context, their reports highlighted the importance of an issue other media organizations hardly paid any attention to.

Arroyo made the proposal after the IPU’s 139^th assembly held last October 18 in Geneva, Switzerland, during which it expressed grave concern over the violation of the human rights of some of its members.

In the published decisions of the IPU Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians (CHRP), there were entries on the alleged human rights violations experienced by two of President Rodrigo Duterte’s critics.

According to the committee, detained Senator Leila De Lima was subjected to acts of intimidation, arbitrary arrest and detention, lack of due process and violation of her right to free expression Senator Antonio Trillanes IV was also mentioned as  experiencing similar human rights violations.

On October 22, Arroyo claimed that this interference in the country’s internal affairs and judicial process is reason enough to withdraw Philippine membership from the union.

Most of the reports focused on the views of lawmakers on Arroyo’s proposal. They noted that Malacañang is supporting it and that a resolution pushing for the withdrawal has been filed in the lower house. Senate President Vicente Sotto III was “inclined to support” it, but said he had to consult his fellow senators first.

Senator Panfilo Lacson and Senator Franklin Drilon are opposed to it because the recommendation was “premature” and withdrawal from IPU would seem like a “tacit admission” of the administration’s guilt.

The Inquirer and ANC reports were the exceptions to this kind of reports.

On October 22, the Inquirer’s In The Know published a backgrounder on the IPU. It provided a brief history of the organization and recalled the IPU CHRP’s resolution on De Lima as being “targeted due to her outspoken criticism of the impact of the current government’s policies on human rights in the Philippines.” The report ended with a short discussion of Trillanes’ amnesty case.

ANC went straight to the source on this matter. On October 25, Dateline Philippines interviewed IPU Secretary-General Martin Chungong, who said that the IPU is not interfering with the Philippine judicial system, but simply doing its job of upholding human rights. The union has since decided to send an official mission to the Philippines to look into the supposed political persecution of Senators De Lima and Trillanes.

These efforts by media to depart from the usual practice of just recording opposing views on certain issues deserve recognition. But they could have also noted that the proposal to withdraw from IPU is part of a pattern: together with the Duterte regime’s withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC), and its dismissal of the findings of the International People’s Tribunal (IPT) on the state of human rights in the Philippines, all are attempts to discredit individuals, institutions and international organizations critical of the government.