The chief of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) has demanded that government officials and non-state actors to compensate the victims of abuses even as she criticized the administration for the culture of impunity that pervades in Mindanao.

CHR Chairwoman Leila M. de Lima said during the 2nd Mindanao Human Rights Summit in Davao City recently: “To say that there are many human rights issues throughout Mindanao is a gross understatement. The prevalence of human rights violations is fed by a continuing culture of impunity, which allows many wrongdoers to evade the meaningful application of accountability.”

She stressed the outbreak of war last year, when the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD) signed between government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was scuttled, led to deaths of civilians in the crossfire and the destruction of property in Maguindanao and Sarangani.

De Lima also reiterated her call for the creation of an independent fact-finding commission to undertake a thorough inquiry into the Ampatuan Massacre even as she slammed President Arroyo for imposing martial law in Maguindanao without any legal and constitutional basis.

Reports from Maguindanao said the massacre was made possible when the Commission on Elections (Comelec) transferred the Comelec satellite office from Cotabato City to Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao (formerly Maganoy) just three weeks before the mass murder happened.

All candidates in Maguindanao were thus forced to file their certificates of candidacy (CoCs) in Ampatuan territory. Both the military and the police declined to provide escorts to the Mangudadatu convoy as well.