Extra-judicial killings claim last victim for ’06

01/02/2007

A member of a party-list group was shot dead on New Year’s Eve in the latest of a spate of political murders in the country, the victim’s colleagues and police yesterday said.

Rodolfo Alvarado, a provincial chairman of Bayan Muna party-list in Albay, was ambushed by a lone gunman aboard a motorcyle and died instantly.

The motive for the attack was not immediately known but Alvarado’s colleagues said it could be linked to the victim’s work.

More than 180 activists – including journalists, human rights workers, left-wing politicians, trade unionists and lawyers – were assassinated in 2006 for their criticism of the government, rights groups say.

Activists blame military “death squads” for the attacks, a claim repeatedly denied by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). The military says many of those slain were members of groups fronting for communist insurgents and may have been targets of internal purges.

Political murders in the country has reportedly reached a record-high under the Arroyo administration, reaching their highest level in 2006 since the toppling of late strongman Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, human activists were recently quoted by Agence France Presse as saying.

According to the report, President Arroyo’s poor record on political murders and human

rights abuses has topped the numbers racked up by Marcos, Aquino, Ramos and Estrada years combined.

“An average of three extra-judicial killings are occurring every week in the country,” a Canadian human rights team concluded recently after a fact-finding mission to the Philippines.

The Canadian team’s report has been dismissed by the Arroyo government as propaganda to serve the country’s communist insurgents.

But human rights group Karapatan says it has recorded 185 such killings in 2006, the highest number since the Marcos regime.

The sheer number has alarmed the European Union, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Roman Catholic Church, all of which have called on Mrs. Arroyo to take action to stop the bloodshed.

The most high-profile murder came Dec. 16 when Rep. Luis Bersamin, an Arroyo ally representing the province of Abra, was shot dead along with his security aide outside a church in Quezon City after the completion of the wedding rites of a niece where he stood as a wedding sponsor.

In response to the bloodshed, Mrs. Arroyo has ordered an increase in the visibility of police and for officers to work closer with communities.

She has also set up a special commission to determine who are behind the slayings which has yet to report its findings.

The Melo Commission, a fact-finding body said it would be finished with its task by end December and submit its report to the President. But several commissioners have said that the report would be based mainly on police and military accounts, which would then blame the leftists for the murders.

Mrs. Arroyo, despite many calls for her to order her police and military to stop the killings by foreign governments and international church leaders, along with international press groups, has not done so, preferring instead to direct her attacks at the leftists groups and her other critics, saying it is the communists who have been behind the murders as a means to destabilize her government.

The AFP, whose officers have also been accused of some of the killings, claim the overall numbers are bloated. AFP