Philippines One year since Maguindanao massacre

To secure an election victory, a local Filipino political leader on November 23 2009, had murdered at least 56 people, including journalists, lawyers and relatives of his alleged opponent. Among them was the lawyer Connie Brizuela. At an Amnesty International meeting on 24 November 2010 this was commemorated. L4L spoke about the impunity with regards to political violence. Up until now, neither the authorities nor the new president Aquino, who has been in office for over a hundred days now, have taken the appropriate action to investigate the killings and prosecute those responsible.

At the meeting on 24 November 2010, a documentary about the murders premiered, part of which you can see here. For more information, see also this Amnesty AI statement.

Amnesty recently reported on the first hundred days of Aquino’s presidency. After his inauguration, L4L called on Aquino to seriously deal with the problem of extrajudicial killings.