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PHILIPPINE GOVERNMENT
GUILTY OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES!
As we commemorate
the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights on 10 December 2008, we, from Rice and Rights, condemn the
government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for its grave violations of the
human rights of the Filipino people.
It is responsible
for the murder of political activists.
The international
community has been shocked by the brazen human rights abuses of the Arroyo
government and the impunity of the perpetrators.
The UN Human
Rights Committee in its 94th session in Geneva on October 30,
2008, found the Philippine government guilty of cover-up in the killing of
human rights defenders as shown in the case of Eden Marcellana and Eddie
Gumanoy.
In November 2007,
UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings Philip Alston found the
Armed Forces of the Philippines implicated in the killing of activists of
the political opposition. They have killed and forcibly disappeared more
than one thousand journalists, lawyers, labor leaders, peasant organizers,
priests, women activists, student leaders and anyone opposing corruption
in government and fighting for reforms in society.
Fact-finding
missions organized by Netherlands-based Lawyers for Lawyers have confirmed
the killings, threats and persecution suffered by progressive lawyers and
judges.
Not one of the
perpetrators of these killings and other human rights abuses have been
punished.
It is responsible
for violating the rights of children.
Mariennet Amper,
12, hanged herself on Nov. 2, 2007 inside their humble house because of
poverty. In a letter found after her death, she wrote that all she wished
for was a pair of school shoes and bicycle for her younger brother and
goats for her unemployed parents: her father, Isabelo, a former
construction worker and mother, Magdalena.
Filipino children
suffer the most under the oppressive society that is presided over by the
Arroyo government. Children of workers and peasants suffer from the
poverty of their parents. They are malnourished. They die from preventable
and curable sicknesses like diarrhea because their parents cannot afford
the medicine. They are forced to leave school and work even at the tender
age of 8 in unhealthy conditions. They are victims of rape, arrest and
killing by soldiers and misrepresented to the public as New People’s Army
“child soldiers” so that government propagandists can justify the
dastardly acts and at the same time discredit the New People’s Army.
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Understanding the Context
of Continuing
Gross Human Rights Violations in the Philippines
by
Nathanael S. Santiago
Secretary-General
Bayan Muna Party-List
Introduction
I thank the organizers of this activity for bringing together human rights
advocates who find common cause and solidarity with the Filipino people.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you updates on and
the context of the continuing gross human rights violations in the
country, and the Filipino people’s struggle for human rights and for
national and social liberation.
Friends, I intend to discuss with you the following topics:
1) Update on the human rights situation and the culpability of the state
in the nationwide killings of civilian activists and other gross
violations of human rights in the Philippines.
2) Factors that led to the worsening human rights situation and the
struggle of the Filipino people for human rights, national and social
liberation.
I. Continuing gross human rights violations
Many of you have already known by now the content of the Final Report to
the United Nations on November 27, 2007 of UN Special Rapporteur on
Extrajudicial Killings Prof. Philip Alston. Prof Alston’s findings point
to a state policy of exterminating and persecuting civilian activists.”
Prof. Alston wrote:
“Two policy initiatives are of special importance to understanding why the
killings continue. First, the military’s counterinsurgency strategy
against the CPP/NPA/NDF increasingly focuses on dismantling civil society
organizations that are purported to be “CPP front groups”…
Second…the criminal justice system has failed to arrest, convict, and
imprison those responsible for extrajudicial executions. This is partly
due to a distortion of priorities that has law enforcement officials
focused on prosecuting civil society leaders rather than their killers.”
Prof. Alston specifically recommended that President Gloria Macapagal
Arroyo, as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines
(AFP), decisively act to remove from the government’s counter-insurgency
program the neutralization of civilian activist groups tagged as communist
fronts and enemies of the state. It also recommended the dismantling of
the Inter-Agency Legal Action Group, the agency created by Mrs. Arroyo to
file fabricated charges against leaders of civil society rather than
seriously prosecuting their killers.
To date, the President refuses to heed the UN rapporteur’s
recommendations. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) keeps on
implementing the much-criticized counter-insurgency strategy. The IALAG
still exists to this day and keeps on filing fabricated criminal charges
against leaders of civil society rather than their killers. Worse, Justice
Secretary Raul Gonzalez heckled Prof. Alston as a mere errand boy of the
UN who should not be given importance.
The killings, abductions and harassment of civilian activists started in
2002 and reached its peak in 2005 and 2006. By 2007, we experienced a
relative decline in killings and disappearances. The decline in killings
is due to tremendous domestic and international pressures we brought upon
the Arroyo government and its armed forces.
At this point, friends, we wish to express our heartfelt gratitude for the
solidarity and support you have extended in our effort to stem the tide of
extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of activists and other
human rights abuses.
It is the height of hypocrisy of the Arroyo government when it gloated
over the decline in killings and bandied it around as a remarkable
achievement of her administration in its report to the United Nations. It
is like praising the mass murderers and masterminds in high government
positions for slowing down their slaughter of innocent civilians!
Until now not a single military or police official has been arrested or
jailed for these dastardly crimes. In fact, the main architects and
implementors of these heinous crimes had been promoted to higher positions
in the AFP, including the notorious Gen. Jovito Palparan and AFP chief
Gen. Hermogenes Esperon.
The climate of impunity pervades because the masterminds and murderers
have not been punished but instead have been praised and promoted by Pres.
Arroyo. Impunity is rearing its ugly head even more this year. There is
now a resurgence of extrajudicial killings, aside from the continuing
systematic human rights abuses by military and police forces.
The resurgence in human rights violations this year is most evident in
Mindanao, in southern Philippines. According to human rights organization
Karapatan, Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights, of the 23
extrajudicial killings from May to November 2008, 19 took place in
Mindanao. This included three members of Bayan Muna – Roel Dotarot (May
15), Danilo Qualbar (November 6) and Rolando Antolihao (November 10).
Arrest orders were issued against 72 leaders and member of various legal
organizations for alleged involvement in an ambush by the New People's
Army against state security forces in Mindoro Oriental, a province in
Southern Luzon. They were denied participation in the preliminary
investigation of the case and their rights to due process were violated.
Karapatan has documented 933 cases of extrajudicial killings and 199 cases
of enforced disappearances since Arroyo’s presidency began in 2001. A
total of 134 members of Bayan Muna have been victims of these
extrajudicial killings. The killings have been most rampant in Southern
Tagalog, Bicol, Central Luzon, Eastern Visayas and Southern Mindanao
regions – areas tagged as priority areas in the government
counter-insurgency offensive.
Gross violations of human rights are not unique to the Arroyo government.
All the past Philippine governments committed gross violations of human
rights against political dissenters and innocent civilians. They only
differ in forms, scale and intensity. Karapatan and other human rights
organizations have documented, made public and can attest to the bad human
rights records of previous Philippine governments.
Certainly, the worst violations of human rights happened during the
martial law regime of Ferdinand Marcos. But the Arroyo government is fast
approaching the scale and intensity of human rights abuses of the Marcos
dictatorship. It has in fact equaled, if not surpassed, the human rights
abuses of Marcos in some respect.
II. Main factors behind gross human rights violations
But why are human rights abuses so widespread and so gross in the
Philippines and why has it worsened under the Arroyo regime? In answering
this question, we have to take into account the following factors:
1. The United States hegemony in the country and its influence over the
AFP
2. The Arroyo government's grave crimes and its desperation to suppress
dissent
3. The unjust neocolonial and reactionary system, the social discontent
that it generates and struggle for human rights and national liberation.
1. The United States influence in the AFP and its hegemonic interests
We are of the view that the US under President George W. Bush is behind
the policy against peace talks and for all-out war and the extermination
of civilian activists.
Despite formal trappings of independence, the Philippines remains a
neocolony of the United States. The US is the most dominant economic,
political and cultural force and influence in the country. Its presence
and influence is most strong and directly felt in the country’s armed
forces.
The US and Philippine governments insists on following the obsolete cold
war 1951 US-RP Mutual Defense Pact and the agreement on Joint US-RP
Military Advisory Group (Jusmag). The US conducts intelligence gathering,
advises the AFP in counter-insurgency strategy and interrogation
techniques, and supplies the latter with deadly weaponry.
The new policy initiative which Prof. Alston observed in the
counter-insurgency strategy with regards to civilian activists as targets
of military attacks was made in the aftermath of the Bush government's
declaration of a global “war on terror.”
The Bush regime unleashed in 2001 wars of aggression and systematic
fascist attacks on civil liberties on the pretext of anti-terrorism. Pres.
Arroyo expressed all-out support to Bush’s war of aggression. Afterwards,
a shift in the policy of the Philippine government on war and peace
process transpired.
First, the AFP, sanctioned by President Gloria Arroyo herself, decided to
implement the new counter-insurgency strategy in 2002-2003 in select
provinces in Luzon, in northern Philippines. Then Col. Jovito Palparan
made the island of Mindoro Oriental, a province of Luzon, the laboratory
of the new strategy patterned after the US' Operation Phoenix in Vietnam.
After that, the extermination of civilian activists were adopted and
implemented by the AFP nationwide. Dr. Jun Saturay, who lived in Mindoro
Oriental, sought political asylum here in Netherlands because of serious
threat to his life.
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(US Operation Phoenix is a
counter-insurgency strategy developed in Vietnam. It aimed to defeat not
only the armed guerrilla movement but also to destroy its alleged legal
political infrastructure. In practice, it targeted for military attacks
legal mass organizations and unarmed, innocent civilians merely suspected
of sympathizing with the guerrillas.)
The Arroyo government’s iron-clad policy extends to the negotiating table
with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. The Arroyo
government indefinitely suspended the peace talks in 2002 and scuttled the
peace process until now. It used lame excuses and later put several
impediments against the continuance of the talks. The US and Arroyo
governments campaigned for the terrorist tagging of the Communist Party of
the Philippines, the New People’s Army, and Prof. Jose Maria Sison, the
chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the
Philippines. The AFP murdered or abducted in the Philippines several
consultants of the NDFP peace panel.
Peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front are also
imperiled because of the US-Arroyo regime’s treachery and self serving
agenda. The Philippine government scrapped the draft agreement on
ancestral domain it had forged with the MILF and caused the renewed
escalation of armed hostilities in Mindanao.
Mrs. Arroyo is responsible for allowing the return and permanent basing of
US military forces in the Philippines, violating national sovereignty and
the Constitution and abusing the US-RP Visiting Forces Agreement. The US
forces are now engaged in intelligence operations and training and in
actual combat operations against armed revolutionary and rebel forces,
especially in Mindanao.
The Arroyo government forged
with the US the Mutual Logistic Support Agreement and the Bilateral
Immunity Agreement. The latter agreement makes US troops immune from
Philippine criminal suits in the International Criminal Court based in the
Netherlands.
2. Arroyo’s grave crimes and rising fascism
Mrs. Arroyo and her government committed grave crimes against the people.
She used and abused her power to suppress the truth and all forms of
dissent.
Massive election fraud, endemic graft and corruption, gross human rights
violations and subservience to foreign powers have reached its height
under the Arroyo administration. One exposé after another, directly
linking Pres. Arroyo to the said crimes, have deeply undermined Arroyo’s
claim to power.
Various surveys show that she has a negative 20 to 30 percent trust and
approval rating for months until now. A big majority of the people want
Mrs. Arroyo removed for being an illegitimate, corrupt, fascist and puppet
president.
Just recently, an impeachment complaint was filed against Mrs. Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo led by Jose de Venecia III, son and namesake of the
former Speaker of the House. He was joined by the mothers of missing
activists Jonas Burgos, Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño. Arroyo's allies
in Congress played deaf and blind and junked the 93-page impeachment
complaint for insufficiency in substance.
The scandal-riddled regime has held on to power by suppressing the truth
and repressing any and all form of dissent. She has issued Executive Order
464 (banning the appearance of government officials in congressional
investigations without her consent ), Proclamation 1017 (granting
emergency powers) and the Calibrated Pre-emptive Response Policy (banning
rallies and mass actions) to curtail the people’s civil and political
liberties. The Supreme Court has struck these presidential proclamations
down as unconstitutional.
President Arroyo as commander-in-chief is responsible for approving and
sanctioning the new counter-insurgency strategy to neutralize and
exterminate civilian activists responsible for mobilizing hundreds of
thousands nationwide against her administration
Mrs. Arroyo, like the dictator Marcos,, is intent on perpetuating herself
in power beyond the end of her term in 2010. Her allies in Congress are
engaging in a renewed bid to amend the Constitution to make this possible.
This, despite numerous surveys showing that the public (67% of those
surveyed) is opposed to charter change. She is mortally afraid of criminal
suits that she will face once she is out of power.
Mrs. Arroyo is taking the road that the Marcos fascist dictatorship
trekked.
Gathering today is a heavy storm of protest coming from almost all social
and political groups against charter change and Arroyo’s bid to perpetuate
herself in power. A big protest action is scheduled on Friday, December 12
as an opening salvo.
3. Exploitative and oppressive system is the root of massive human rights
abuses
The gross and widespread human rights violations in the country is rooted
in the exploitative and oppressive system favoring foreign powers and a
minority elite.
The financial and economic crises wracking the US, Europe and Japan pales
in comparison to the degree of economic crisis, joblessness and mass
poverty in the Philippines. Our country has been in a constant period of
economic crisis long before the global financial meltdown.
According to the socio-economic think tank IBON Foundation, 82% of
Filipinos are poor and live off less than US$2 everyday. The poorest 30%
or 5.2 million families have negative savings. The cost of living, now
pegged at P 850.00 (US $17) is hardly met by the great majority of the
people. The daily minimum wage of P 365.00 ( US$8) in the National Capital
Region is not enough to feed an average family of six.
Seventy percent of the peasantry, which comprise the big majority of the
total population, do not own the land they till. About 50% of the labor
population suffer from unemployment and underemployment. The government
understates the unemployment rate at 10% of the total workforce and
underemployment at 23%. The phenomenon of mass migration continues, as
close to 10 million Filipinos work overseas in order for their families in
the Philippines to survive.
Massive landlessness and joblessness in the Philippines are attributes of
a backward, semi-feudal, foreign dominated and import-dependent economy.
Industrial capitalist countries such as the US, Japan and European
countries dominate and further ravage the economy. They have turned the
Philippines into a dumping ground for their surplus capital and products
and a supplier of cheap labor and raw materials.
Neoliberal globalization paves the way to the unbridled plunder of our
natural resources and exploitation of cheap labor by US, Japanese, and
European banks and corporations.
Foreign rule and plunder is perpetuated in cahoots with Filipino
compradors and landlords now in control of state power. They use the state
to maintain the system of exploitation and oppression of the peasants,
workers and professionals. They use their power to plunder our natural
resources.
The gross violations of the people’s civil-political, socio-economic and
cultural rights by foreign powers and an elite few is systemic in
character. The neocolonial and comprador-landlord state and social system
is the root of massive human rights abuses. That system has to end.
III. Advancing the struggle for human rights and liberation
The people’s movement in the Philippines is vibrant and determined to
fight and advance the rights of the poor and oppressed who comprise the
great majority of the population.
Our hopes and our future rest on the growing social movement fighting for
human rights and national and social liberation.
Our hopes rest on the peasants’ struggle for genuine land reform and the
workers' struggle for just wages and better working condition. Most of all
our hopes rest on the Filipino people’s struggle for national liberation
from foreign domination and social liberation from comprador-landlord
dictatorship.
We are calling on you, friends and human rights advocates to help us in
the struggle to:
◦ Criticize and pressure the government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to stop
the extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, persecution of
opposition activists, and other human rights abuses.
◦ Seek justice for the victims of human rights abuses and make Pres.
Arroyo and high military, police and civilian officials accountable for
their crimes against humanity.
◦ Press for the resumption of the peace talks and genuine peace process
between the government and the National Democratic Front and the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front.
◦ Fight the US-led war of aggression and economic plunder against the
people.
◦ Support the struggle of the poor and oppressed peoples for human rights
and for national and social liberation.
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