Activists Urge Pope to to Investigate Alleged Human Rights Violations

Left-wing Philippine activists urged Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday to visit the predominantly Catholic country to investigate extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations.

A left-wing fishermen's group, Pamalakaya, said in a statement it will write to the Vatican and the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines to persuade Benedict to visit the Philippines.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said Friday she abhors political violence and her government has brought the number of extrajudicial killings down by 83 percent last year.

But the New York-based Human Rights Watch said last month the Philippines has done little to implement recommendations made last year by Philip Alston, the U.N. special envoy on extrajudicial killings, and the government's own fact-finding commission.

Both have linked soldiers to hundreds of deaths and disappearances of mostly left-wing activists from political organizations branded by the military as communist rebel fronts.

Arroyo said in January that seven activists and journalists were killed last year, compared to 41 in 2006.

The left-wing human rights group Karapatan said fewer activists were killed or abducted in 2007 because of pressure from the international community but claimed 68 activists were killed and 26 were missing.

Karapatan said 887 activists and their supporters have been killed and another 185 have disappeared since Arroyo took office in 2001.

In his UN address on Friday, Benedict said that respect for human rights, not violence, was the key to solving many of the world's problems.

Those whose rights are trampled "become easy prey to the call to violence," while respect for human rights helps convert the heart and "leads to a commitment to resist violence, terrorism and war," he said.