OPENING REMARKSThe Honourable Francisco F. Baraan III
Undersecretary, Department of JusticeRepublic of the Philippines
His Excellency, the Ambassador of Japan, Mr. Makoto Katsura; Director of UNAFEI, Mr. Masaki
Sasaki; our visiting experts; the participants of this seminar from the Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia,Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
My dear participants of this three-day seminar: On behalf of the Department of Justice, the sponsor ofthis seminar, I welcome all the participants, especially our foreign guests, to our country – the Philippines. I
also extend a welcome from the Secretary of Justice, Secretary Leila M. De Lima, who is now in Washington
D.C., attending an international conference on corruption that requires the attendance of many secretaries ofjustice from all over the world.
Why do some crimes go unpunished? Why do criminals just go on their merry way? The big names
and the big ﬁsh, the high and the mighty, they are all almost visual. It is because they have all the means tobribe, the means to hide, the means to protect themselves; but more than that, they have the means and themotive to harass and intimidate witnesses and even kill witnesses and whistle-blowers. And in the Philippines,kill they will. A living example would be the Maguindanao massacre. Many witnesses were silenced and thekillers realized that they have cultured a prevalent impunity. This is not only the case in the Philippines but inmost Southeast Asian countries. So, this seminar comes at a very opportune time when the President, during
his State of the Nation Address, mentioned the strengthening of the Witness Protection Program as well as theprimary programmes of the new administration under his presidency. Indeed, the administration of justicewill fail unless we come up with a strong, effective programme to protect and to secure witnesses and whistleblowers. In the Philippines, for example, we have many laws intended to protect whistle-blowers. In fact, wehave the Witness Protection and Security Beneﬁt Program which was passed as early as 1991. And then we
have some pending bills in the Senate: one of them, the bill of Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, establishes
a whistle-blower bill of rights, and we have the same provisions in the impeachment proceedings in the Houseof Representatives. We have likewise the same provision in our Anti-Trafﬁcking in Persons Act of 2003. Also,in our National Drug Law Enforcement and Prevention Coordinating Center, we also have this provision toprotect and secure whistle-blowers and witnesses. In a very recent resolution passed by the Supreme Court,
the rule of the Writ of Amparo, includes provisions for the protection and security of whistle-blowers – it is
one of the important features of the Writ of Amparo. And even our many offices and agencies in thegovernment, like the Bureau of Corrections, the Office of the Ombudsman and the Department of Social
Welfare and Development, in cases of administrative proceedings, all have almost similar provisions toprotect and secure whistle-blowers. And as it happens, the Philippines has good initiatives and good laws, but
bad implementation - almost always. So, this is a challenge to all the participants in this seminar: that wecome up with solutions to protect and secure whistle-blowers and to send the message to criminals thatsilencing a witness or a whistle-blower is no longer an option. Thank you very much and good day!

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