Japan group tags AFP in killings, wants aid to RP frozen

04/22/2007

Japanese human rights activists on Saturday urged Tokyo to freeze development aid to Manila over a continuing spate of unsolved political killings under President Arroyo’s watch which they said point to the “involvement” of the Philippine military.

The activists belonging to Human Rights Now (HRN) investigated some 15 killings and interviewed five torture victims from April 14 to 21 and concluded that Filipino security forces were involved in most of them.

“In certain cases we have investigated, we are convinced that the military is involved,” HRN said.

It called on Tokyo, the Philippines’ top aid donor, to suspend a major loan package to the Philippines announced by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a visit to Manila in December last year.

No amount was announced, but officials had said it would involve funds for energy cooperation as well as development aid to Mindanao, the country’s main southern island, which is plagued by Muslim and communist insurgencies.

Japan contributed $9.4 billion over the past 23 years, or 51 percent of all foreign loans and grants to Manila in the period, the officials said.

Last year, it sent a representative to join a peace mission monitoring a ceasefire pact between the government and Muslim separatist rebels operating mainly in Mindanao.

The HRN said it was gravely concerned that no military or police official implicated in the killings had been prosecuted.

“We emphasize the gravity of this human rights violation. In the cases we investigated, the victims included highly respected lawyers, human rights activists, union leaders, church workers, village captains and leftist activists,” it added.

The Japanese rights group said the murders had had a “chilling effect” on society.

Its report came two months after United Nations special rapporteur Philip Alston also blamed the military for the killings and said they remained in “almost total denial” of the more than 800 extra-judicial murders since 2001, the year Mrs. Arroyo took power through a military-backed coup against sitting President Joseph Estrada.

Local rights groups say the over 800 government critics were killed for political reasons According to them, the murders were state-sanctioned to quash popular dissent, a claim that has been officially denied by the Arroyo administration.

Mrs. Arroyo herself has not denounced the assassinations, except to supposedly address them through the creation, for one, of the Melo Commission, which also pointed to the involvement of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in the murders.

With AFP