PNP reinforces human rights education

Amid fears it will violate human rights in implementing the anti-terror law, the Philippine National Police (PNP) will undergo a continuing education on human rights to upgrade its doctrines on its role as protector and maintainer of law and order. PNP chief Oscar Calderon ordered Friday all police commanders nationwide to invite their respective regional directors to conduct lectures to PNP personnel on subjects related to human rights. Calderon said the lectures should also cover the theory and practice of universal value of "freedom with sense of responsibility" and other democratic tenets and how these are practiced and observed in the society. He said this will ensure "the values of freedom, democracy and justice are not lost and are consciously and systematically inculcated as well as to ensure that the nation's complicated justice system that the PNP is duty bound to implement is fully understood." The PNP chief admitted the order stemmed from the findings of the Melo Commission and UN rapporteur Philip Alston. The commission and Alston called for the “rethinking and reorienting of policy" of the PNP, especially in handling cases related to extrajudicial killings. But Calderon disputed the propaganda being spread against the police by the communist movement and their frontline organizations that the PNP is a reactionary institution. “The PNP is a dynamic and modernizing institution and is conscious of its thrust to address the problems bedeviling our society," he said. “As part of this dynamism is the consistent upgrading of the intellectual capabilities of its officers and legal minds so as to make us a viable entity in the environment of rapidly developing information and communication technology." - GMANews.TV