Press Statement
January 30, 2007


Bayan Muna dissatisfied over Melo Panel findings
By Satur C. Ocampo
House Deputy Minority Leader
Bayan Muna Representative and President

1. We are highly dissatisfied over the major findings of the Melo
Commission as made public by retired Justice Jose Melo.  In sum, the
Melo Commission failed in its public vow to get into the bottom of the
killings: Its report, based on Justice Melo's statement to the media,
is indicative of a whitewash.

2. We suspect that Justice Melo chose to speak on the and "most
popularly accepted" findings so that the military line on alleged
purges by the Left and other baseless accusations of military
apologists could also be considered and contained in the report. We
demand that Malacanang immediately make public the full 89-page report
for scrutiny by all parties, including media.

3. Melo's pronouncements -- that Jovito Palparan is liable under the
principle of command responsibility, and that soldiers acted on their
own in killing unarmed activists and civilians -- are tantamount to a
whitewash.

•       The report weakens the people's case against Palparan by saying 
he
was merely negligent in failing to stop the killings. Moreover,
command responsibility is not a criminal offense under Philippine law.
Besides, the killings have continued even after Palparan's retirement,
indicating there is a higher source of the policy to perpetrate
extrajudicial killings.

•       The report covers up the role of President Arroyo. The Melo
Commission's contention that soldiers acted individually in these
murders is arguably the same as saying the incidents are only isolated
cases. The fact is that Arroyo is the only post-Marcos president to
publicly proclaim a counter-insurgency operation-plan under which
extrajudicial killings have been perpetrated in a systematic and
nationwide scale. The panel's pathetic contention cannot explain the
more than 800 extrajudicial killings documented so far.

4. The whitewash is most obvious in the failure of the Melo Commission
to apply the same command responsibility to President Arroyo who
approved Oplan Bantay Laya and who twice promoted and publicly praised
Palparan for his terror tactics.

5. The dismal performance of the Melo Commission buttresses the call
for a genuine independent commission that is competent and acceptable
to the victims' families, the nation and the world community. It must
adhere to established UN protocols and Amnesty International's
recommendations on such an independent commission. ###


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