In a press conference here, CHR Chair Jose Luis Martin Gascon said that the Human Rights Claims Board, composed of nine members, have divided themselves into three groups which process an average of 300 claims per day.
“That P10-billion fund would not be given pro rata. The share would depend on the degree of suffering related to martial law. There are equivalent points for the various degrees and nature of human rights violations against each claimant,” Gascon said.
He stressed, however, that some of the claimants would be taken off the list if their claims are found fraudulent or insufficient.
Gascon said that while there is a proposal to extend the deadline for the board to finish processing the claims of martial law victims, he preferred that the processing be done before Human Rights Day next year. Human Rights Day is marked every Dec. 10.
“We must keep a balance because the supposed beneficiaries are already in their senior years,” he noted.
The Aquino government has insisted on the P10 billion compensation derived from recovered wealth of the Marcoses from abroad.
The government has disregarded the decisions of Judge Manuel Real of a Hawaii court who, in January 1995 and January 2011, ordered that martial law victims be indemnified $1.964 billion and $353.6 million, respectively, from recovered Marcos wealth. The court pegged a penalty of $100,000 per month for non-compliance.
By December 2014, the Presidential Commission on Good Government had remitted to the national treasury some P168 billion recovered from the Marcoses and their cronies since the agency was created in February 1986. Part of the amount was the P70-billion coco levy fund.
The government has maintained it was entitled to the recovered wealth, and not the martial law victims.
As of last May, the count of claimants numbered only 9,539 persons who were supposed to benefit from the P10 billion indemnification fund.
