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Jose Luis Martin Gascon chairs the Human Rights Commission, a constitutional body that investigates human rights violations.
The chairman of the Philippine Human Rights Commission (CHR) often clashed with President Rodrigo Duterte over the deadly drug war and died after contracting the COVID-19 virus.
In a social media post on Saturday morning, Jose Luis Martin Gascon’s brother Miguel confirmed the news and wrote in Tagalog: “In In all your battles, we have to lose to COVID. Love you, brother!”
The Philippine Daily Inquirer also quoted the Human Rights Commission as saying that Gascon “passed away.”
He is a lawyer, graduated from Cambridge University, England, and is the youngest member of the Constitutional Committee that drafted a new constitution after the Philippines restored democracy in 1987.
Gascon was appointed CHR Chairman by then President Benigno Aquino in 2015. This is an independent constitutional office whose mission is to investigate all violations of human rights and violations of civil and political rights.
After Aquino’s tenure ended in 2016, Gascon continued to serve until the current tenure of Duterte. His term of office was originally scheduled to expire in May 2022 and is protected by the Constitution.
Because of his role in investigating human rights violations, he is often the target of Duterte’s verbal attacks.
In 2017, when Gascon requested an investigation into a series of killings of teenage men related to the war on drugs, the president wrongly accused him of being a “gay” or “pedophile.”
Gascon transferred the “insults” and “harmful language” and told ABS-CBN News that he hoped that the president “may choose to withdraw them in order to have a common civic space.”
He said that his role in CHR is “part of the democratic system of checks and balances in the Philippines.”
In 2018, when Duterte defended his drug war in his annual State of the Union address, Gascon retorted that respect for human rights and support for crime can never be the same.
He pointed out that human rights defenders only called for “maintaining the rule of law and constitutional guarantees” when the government launched a campaign against illegal drugs, rather than obstructing law enforcement.
Gascon Support the investigation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Duterte’s drug war killed thousands of impoverished Filipinos accused of using illegal drugs. Independent investigators, reporters and witnesses said that many of the victims were unarmed or innocent.
On Thursday, human rights lawyers, activists and journalists mourned Gascon’s death.
Edre Olalia, president of the National People’s Lawyers Union, said that he was “very shocked and sad” after learning the news.
He wrote on social media: “When clowns and leeches mocked and played with our rights, another person left.”
Human rights lawyer and former Supreme Court spokesperson Ted Tete also wrote on social media: “You are a giant of human rights. The forest has become bare because of your fall, but the seeds you plant will bear fruit.”
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