Military pressured to dismantle 'death squads'

By Jason Gutierrez
Agence France-Presse
Last updated 05:30pm (Mla time) 01/31/2007

MANILA -- The Philippine military came under increasing pressure Wednesday to dismantle so-called "death squads" after a damning report implicating certain elements in a chain of killings targeting activists.

President Gloria Arroyo called on witnesses and families of the victims to come out, assuring them of protection if they "speak out, lay the evidence and serve the high cause of justice."

A rights group described the killings as a "war of annihilation" and lawmakers and international representatives urged the government to make the report public.
Arroyo assured diplomats during a reception at the presidential palace that her government wanted to end "our sad history of political violence."

"The AFP [Armed Forces of the Philippines] itself is deeply involved in this effort to check its ranks and protect its name and prestige from the stigma of this issue," she said.

The report submitted to her Tuesday by a special commission set up to investigate the killings, headed by retired supreme court associate justice Jose Melo, suggested the perpetrators were communist rebels and elements of the military.

Details of the report have not been officially released but Arroyo said she needed to "absorb fully what it means."

Melo has refused to comment on the commission's findings.

A member of the commission over the weekend implicated military personnel, thugs hired by politicians and leftist insurgents of being behind the attacks.

On Tuesday, Arroyo ordered the creation of special courts to look into the killings, a boost to the witness protection program and told the military to investigate its own ranks.

She also invited European governments who had earlier condemned the killings to send investigators to join the widening probe.

Ruth Cervantes, spokeswoman for the human rights group Karapatan, said it had documented 830 cases of extrajudicial killings allegedly perpetrated by military "death squads" since Arroyo came to power in 2001.

Nearly all the killings were carried out by masked men who either gun down their victims in daylight or snatch them in the dead of the night.

"This is a policy coming from the higher echelons of the government and military establishment," Cervantes said.

The killings were a "war of annihilation against the political activists and those the military suspect as sympathetic to them, whether they are armed or unarmed," she added.

The military has admitted some of its members may have been "involved in the deaths of some members of militant organizations."

"We have taken action to investigate them in order to prosecute those who are responsible," the military said.

House of Representatives deputy minority leader Satur Ocampo, of the leftist party Bayan Muna (Nation First), demanded Arroyo make public the 89-page report "for scrutiny by all parties."

He also called on the government to immediately file charges against military commanders, notably retired Major General Jovito Palparan, who led the government's anti-insurgency campaign and is blamed by militants for many of the killings.

In interviews with Agence France-Presse last year, Palparan denied having a hand in the killings and instead blamed the communist New People's Army, which he said was engaged in purging its own ranks and organizations fronting for it.


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