Attorney Roan Libarios, National President of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines and a Mindanaoan, challenges the delegates of the 4th Mindanao Human Rights Summit to advocate for a negotiated settlement on the peace talks in pursuit of human rights. "There will be no lasting promotion of HR when people are subjected to the human rights violations of continuing armed conflict," he said.

Mamanwa woman leader Ginggin Analagan from Kitcharao, Agusan del Sur, speaks at the 4th Mindanao Human Rights Summit on how soldiers burned her village during an operation. The Summit, held in Davao City last December 2, called for the pullout of military troops in the hinterlands for the continuing human rights violations.
 

Evelyn Badol, a pregnant farmer from Arakan, North Cotabato, speaks at the 4th Mindanao Human Rights Summit on how soldiers arrested his relative Noli Badol whom they alleged is a New People's Army. The Summit, held in Davao City last December 2, called for the pullout of military troops in communities and the release of Badol.

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Canada-Philippines Solidarity for Human Rights

END IMPUNITY NOW!
Statement on the International Day to End Impunity Now!

November 23 marks the single deadliest attack against journalists in history, when in 2009, 32 journalists, along with 26 other civilians, were executed in Maguindanao, Southern Philippines while on a convoy to cover municipal elections. Known as the Ampatuan Massacre, after the local warlord clan known and feared because of its own private army and strong connections to then President Macapagal-Arroyo and the Philippine military, the massacre received international attention from human rights advocates and the press. Two years and a new President later, no one has been charged. Justice has not been served.

In the global campaign against impunity, press freedom organizations around the world called for an International Day to End Impunity on the 23rd of November of every year, using the Ampatuan Massacre to highlight the issue of impunity.
 

The Canada Philippines Solidarity for Human Rights joins this international call to highlight what is happening in the Philippines where the culture of impunity reigns supreme over the rule of law, where it is not only journalists who are on the firing line, but also workers, farmers, human rights activists, lawyers, indigenous peoples, health workers, lawyers, environmentalists, anti-mining activists, students, and church people who struggle to fight for and defend their rights, voice their critical and legitimate dissent and work to make changes in society.
 

Impunity remains the most serious issue that characterizes the extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances in the Philippines. Local and international human rights groups, including the UN Special Rapporteur on Summary Executions, have pointed again and again to the military and state security forces as the perpetrators of human rights violations, and by command responsibility, to the President of the Philippines who is also the Commander-in-Chief.
 

That nothing has been done to stop the killings and to render justice to the victims by President Aquino is a clear signal to the military that they can do whatever they want, and they will never be caught. The promise to run after the perpetrators and hold the previous President Arroyo and the military accountable for the crimes against human rights has become empty Presidential rhetoric. President Aquino either quietly approves of this culture of impunity, is unable to control the military or is dependent on them and the counter-insurgency operation hell bent on terrorizing the people and eliminating all militant, critical and legitimate dissent. President Aquino clearly is guilty of all of these because extrajudicial killings continue in its most brazen forms. The most recent killing of Fr. Faustino Tentorio, a foreign missionary working in Mindanao with indigenous communities and in anti-mining issues, is a clear example that impunity still prevails.
 

Impunity in the Philippines is also fuelled by the economic and military support that President Aquino, as with all the Presidents before him, receives from the United States. In the Philippines, military officers like the general turned politician Palparan, gets promotions and accolades even when charges are brought in by his victims who have called him the “Butcher of Samar” for the atrocities that he and his men have done. In the Philippines, officers and soldiers of the arresting unit who arrested, detained and tortured 43 health workers are promoted even after these arrests, detention and torture were declared illegal, immoral and unconstitutional. The military, and this includes Para-military and despotic warlords, get away with murder because they can.
 

We join the people’s organizations in the Philippines that have come together in the End Impunity Alliance in their demand that President Aquino end this impunity.
 

We call on the Aquino administration to:
 

1)Investigate, arrest and prosecute the direct perpetrators of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and other human rights violations, including the high government officials, military and police officers who provided policy direction and political justification, praised and promoted the notorious military and police officers implicated, provided systematic cover-up and gave all-out support to the government's counter-insurgency operations ;

2) Stop Operation Plan Bayanihan which has declared an all-out war against the people

3) Stop the military’s vilification campaign against activists and progressives, specifically linking them to the New People’s Army, thereby setting them up for “neutralization” (a military euphemism for elimination) first politically, and eventually, physically.

4) Undertake summary action against military commanders in areas of responsibility where extrajudicial killings take place and against police superintendents who make no headway in investigating these killings and other gross HRVs.

5) Stop the widespread practice of arresting, detaining and convicting leaders and members of progressive organizations for alleged criminal offenses on the basis of fabricated charges and evidence. Release all political prisoners detained on the basis of false charges.

Canada-Philippines Solidarity for Human Rights
Email: cps_hr@yahoo.com

Vancouver, BC
13 November 2011
 

Bai Ali Indayla of Kawagib Moro Human Rights Alliance reports of 15,000 displaced Moro civilians in the "all-out justice" campaign in Basilan and Zamboanga Sibugay. The Summit calls on PNoy to end militarization in the communities.

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On the Occasion of the International Day to End Impunity
Bayan Canada Statement
November 2011 - Canada

On November 23, 2011, it will have been two years since the massacre of 58 people including 32 journalists in the hands of the Ampatuan warlord clan, one year since the death of botanist Dr Leonard Co and his companions in the hands of the Philippine military, and one month since the murder of Italian priest and anti-mining activist, Fr. Fausto Tentorio and a farmer named Ramon Batoy. Fifty four political killings, eight enforced disappearances and a year and several months after President Aquino took power, what now comes to mind when we think of this administration? Why the creation of more paramilitary groups to protect foreign mining and the painfully slow progress in bringing to justice powerful elites like the Ampatuans and the Arroyos?

It becomes more crystal clear now that the Aquino administration is no different from the past regimes. Its policies mimic that of the past administrations, trying its best to sound original and yet managing to sound like a bad karaoke song, sung over and over again; the administration betray the same lack of political will to gain justice for the victims of human rights violations and their families and to punish the perpetrators, and this administration's state security forces continue in their attacks on unarmed civilians.

Aquino's solution to the growing unrest and popular opposition towards destructive foreign mining is to train, arm and deploy civilian militias to protect mining interests, including Canadian mining operations. This exposes how Aquino's concern for the safety and security of foreign interests override that of the safety and security of the Filipino people.

This subservient Am(erican)-boy and his government recently hosted US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and signed the Manila Declaration reaffirming the Mutual Defense Treaty (signed sixty years ago) as the “foundation for US-RP relations for the next 60 years and beyond." BAYAN Canada knows full well that the foundation of US-RP relations is one rooted in colonialism through bloody subjugation, repression and unequal treaties. All previous, present and future national security plans (Oplan Batay Laya, Oplan Bayanihan, etc...) under a subservient Philippine state will only result in further human rights violations as the mercenary Philippine army does the bidding of US imperialism.

While extra-judicial killings continue unabated, the culture of impunity can be witnessed by the state's coddling of the perpetrators and the lack of protection for civilian casualties in the State's all out war against the people (especially the war in Mindanao), which in all hypocrisy the current regime has coined as “all-out-justice.” In fact, one witness and two relatives of the victims of the gruesome Ampatuan massacre have already been killed while the other witnesses and victims’ kin either face threats to their own lives or are offered multi-million cash in exchange for withdrawing the charges against the powerful Ampatuan clan. Meanwhile, the recent arrest of former president Arroyo only came after she twice attempted to leave the country, manipulating her appointees in the Supreme Court to overturn any decision on her travel ban. We are certain that no action would have been done had there been no uproar from the people. Still, the charges of fraud falls short of holding her accountable for her role, as commander-in-chief, in the more than one thousand political killings under her administration and the various graft and corruption scandals involving her family.

This bloody, blundering business must end immediately. History shows us that our hope resides in the power of the people and not on the idle promises of powerful political elites or on the moribund system based on the extraction of wealth through exploitation, oppression and repression. We must dismantle the violent structures that plague the people and together build a society based on justice, lasting peace and true freedom. This is the dream which drives ordinary citizens in the world today to occupy, to take to the streets, organize, resist and rebel in the face of unprecedented repression. And while the peoples of the world struggle for this dream, we, the Filipino people, including those far away from home, will surely do our part to make it a reality.

Stop the political killings! Dismantle paramilitary groups in the Philippines!
End impunity now!

BAYAN Canada is a progressive alliance of Filipino groups and organizations from coast to coast and a member of the International League of Peoples Struggle (ILPS)
 

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Campus journalists condemn impunity inside and outside schools

Two days before the second year commemoration of the Ampatuan Massacre was the 32nd birthday of Beng Hernandez, then Features Editor of Atenews, Vice President for Mindanao of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) and the Deputy Secretary-general of human rights group Karapatan. Beng was only 22 when she was mercilessly killed by military personnel in a farmer’s shanty in Arakan, North Cotabato last April 5, 2002. Until now, there is still no justice for Beng despite UN’s resolution holding the Philippine government responsible.

The coincidental proximity of the commemoration of the two events is an opportune occasion for us, campus journalists, to stage our strongest condemnation of the phenomena of impunity in our midst.
When Beng was murdered, our colleagues in the campus press cried for justice. Only few listened. With the one-time liquidation of 58 civilians, of whom 32 were media workers, in Ampatuan, Maguindanao in 2009, a greater number of people cried for justice. And we get a greater chance of being heard. So we in the campus press join in shouting for justice for the 58 victims of the gruesome massacre in the hope of maximizing the venue for mainstreaming the cases of those hundred others who were also killed, unfortunately just not in a controversial massacre. One case is Beng’s.
 

It was a good leap when many concerned people agreed to declare November 23 as International Day of No Impunity. Those who died without having claimed justice have at last a day each year to be remembered not as mere “souls” (because we do that in November 1 and 2) but as collateral damages of a complex social entropy highlighted by the state’s irresponsibility.
 

We in CEGP do not see impunity as characterized only by killings. Impunity means not holding a perpetrator of injustice accountable. We consider the more than 300 unresolved cases of campus press freedom violations nationwide as impunity. We consider withholding of student publication’s funds as impunity, censorship as impunity, threats and harassments as impunity. We consider efforts to forcefully close student publications and expulsion of campus journalists as impunity. The number of injustices is rising and no one has yet faced the bars for all these repressive actions.
How can we trust our government to protect journalists like Beng and those killed in Maguindanao when it could not even eliminate the growing list of press freedom violations inside school campuses? While it has not protected workers of truth from threats of death, it has not also delivered justice to those killed. What a very disappointing government we have.
 

Today, one of the believed master architects of the perpetuation of impunity is now under arrest. In last year’s inaugural speech of PNoy, he said : “There shall be no reconciliation without justice!” The reconciliation part might be unlikely to happen, but please give chance to justice.###
 

For reference:

Paul Randy P. Gumanao
Vice President for Mindanao
College Editors Guild of the Philippines