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Since president
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo joined the US global "War on Terrorism", the Philippines
has become the site of an ongoing undeclared war against peasant and union
activists, progressive political dissidents and lawmakers, human rights lawyers
and activists, women leaders and a wide range of print and broadcast
journalists. Because of the links between the army, the regime and the death
squads, political assassinations take place in an atmosphere of absolute
impunity. The vast majority of the attacks occur in the countryside and
provincial towns. The reign of terror in the Philippines is of similar scope and
depth as in Colombia. But unlike Colombia, the rampaging state terrorism has not
drawn sufficient attention from international public opinion.
State Repression
Between 2001 and 2006
hundreds of killings, disappearances, death threats and cases of torture have
been documented by the independent human rights centre, Karapatan, and the
church-linked Ecumenical Institute for Labour Education and Research. Since
Macapagal Arroyo came to power in 2001 there have been 400 documented
extrajudicial killings. In 2004, 63 were killed and in 2005, 179 were
assassinated and another 46 disappeared and presumed dead. So far in the first
two-and-a-half months of 2006 there have been 26 documented political
assassinations.
An analysis of the
class and social background of the victims of this systematic state terror in
2005 demonstrates that the largest sector, about 70, have been peasants and
peasant leaders involved in land and farm labour disputes. The military has
invariably accused the murdered and disappeared peasants of links to or sympathy
with the communist guerrillas or Muslim separatists. The victims include members
of the national farmers’ association, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), as
well as Igorot, Agta and Moro indigenous minority peasant leaders involved in
protecting their lands. One notorious massacre occurred in late November 2005
when 47 peasants and their legal representatives held an open, public meeting
over a land dispute in Palo, Leyte in the Visayas. A large force of soldiers
surrounded and attacked the meeting killing nine peasants outright and arresting
over a dozen. An additional 18 "disappeared" and are presumed dead. The "Palo
Massacre" of the members of the San Agustin Farmers Beneficiaries Cooperative
and Alang-Alang Small Farmers Association was at first presented by the armed
forces as a military encounter with the New Peoples Army and a few homemade
weapons were planted on the victims. In this, as in all other cases, none of the
perpetrators have been punished and there has been no official investigation.
Workers and labour
leaders form the next largest group of victims of assassination (at least 18),
not including the disappeared and presumed dead. Members of a national labour
federation, Kilusan Mayo Uno (May First Movement), Nestle’s Workers’ Union,
Central Azucareara de Tarlac, Negros Federation of Sugar Workers, a leader of
the Department of Agrarian Reform Employee Association, regional college
employee union leaders and various militants in both the electrical company and
bus company employee unions were murdered in 2005.
Earlier in 2005, 26
unarmed Muslim detainees in a military prison in Manila were shot protesting
against their prolonged and arbitrary detention, lack of a trial date and
horrific prison conditions. These men were mostly vendors and displaced peasants
and fishermen living with their families in Manila. They were accused, but never
convicted, of membership in the Abu Sayaf kidnapping gang.
Seven print and radio
journalists and writers were killed in 2005 as well as seven attorneys and
judges involved in human rights, labour and land dispute cases. Among the
religious community, there were three targeted assassinations of clergy and
seven church workers, all involved in advocacy work with the poor, peasants,
workers and national minorities.
This listing of
killings in 2005 doesn’t include attempted assassinations, illegal detention and
torture and unreported disappearances. The victims were killed by death squads
controlled by the military with the aim of protecting the power of the large
landowners and land-grabbers, timber and mining barons and company bosses with
the connivance of the regime.
Another important
group of victims, which overlaps with peasants and workers associations, are the
83 leaders and members of the popular left political party, Bayan Muna (The
People First) and its "party-list" affiliates. Most were systematically murdered
in the provinces outside of Metro Manila between 2001 and 2005 (67 in 2005
alone). Leaders and coordinators of allied party-list groups, such as the
women’s party Gabriela and the urban poor people’s party, Anakpawis (Toiling
Masses), have been murdered, disappeared or wounded. Elected officials from
Bayan Muna, such a Tarlac City councilman, Abelardo Ladera, were shot in broad
daylight, prompting defiant provincial funeral marches. His killing followed the
notorious 2004 massacre of hacienda union workers in Tarlac and the subsequent
systematic elimination of witnesses.
A breakdown of the 66
death squad killings of members and supporters of the progressive political
parties in 2005 include 33 from the militant urban poor people’s party,
Anakpawis, and 30 from Bayan Muna. Five members of Anakpawis and three from
Bayan Muna have "disappeared" and are presumed dead in 2005. So far three Bayan
Muna officials have been assassinated in the first 10 weeks of 2006.
Since 2003, the
Philippines became the second most dangerous country for journalists after Iraq
because of the staggering number of reporters killed by death squads or who
simply disappeared. Most recently a radio reporter involved in exposing abuses
at a local mine was kidnapped by death squads working for the mine owners in
late February 2006 and is presumed dead.
State sponsored
terror today is reminiscent of the worst days of martial law, under the dictator
Ferdinand Marcos (1972-86). As during the Marcos years, the entire countryside
is virtually under military control, sharply limiting the role of civilian
administrators. A manual published by the Macapagal regime, entitled ‘Knowing
the Enemy’ is used by the Armed Forces throughout the country to label legal
mass organisations and civil rights groups, like the Philippine Association of
Protestant Lawyers, as supporters of "terrorism".
The military death
squad campaign has all the earmarks of US-sponsored "low intensity" warfare
against the civilian population. The military "proscribes" or labels individuals
and groups as terrorists on the basis of what it claims to be "secret
intelligence" in order to criminalise their right to resist oppression and fight
for self-determination and justify their elimination. The creation of these
"lists" is outside of the process of judicial scrutiny and limits any legal
protection for the victims or their survivors. Using the black propaganda of a
psychological warfare operation, the victims and their associations are
invariably described as "terrorists".
Background
A de facto
civilian-military alliance has been ruling the Philippines, since with the
declaration of martial law by Marcos in 1972. In the 1960s most economists
considered the Philippines to be the most economically progressive nation in
south-east Asia. With the advent of the liberalisation of the economy, it has
become and remains one of the poorest and most socially polarised country in
Asia, with a per capita GDP of US $ 950, about half of Thailand’s. With over 50
per cent of total private assets controlled by 15 extended super-rich families,
it is one of the most unequal societies in the world. In stark contrast to the
rest of Asia, there has been no economic progress in the past two decades. The
Philippines, with a population of over 85 million, has one of the highest
unemployment rates (20 per cent) and an additional 30 per cent underemployed in
the informal sector. Over 40 per cent of the households are unable to secure
adequate shelter and food; these are the indigent poor. The once highly regarded
public educational and health systems have sharply deteriorated due to massive
government cuts in social spending and privatisation. The nation, whose research
institutions produced the high yield "miracle rice", is now a net importer of
rice and other food staples. Malnutrition is widespread, according to the World
Health Organisation. Upwards of eight million Filipinos, unable to find decent
work at home, are working abroad to support their families. "Better to die
working in Iraq, than to stay home and watch your family starve" was the
pitiful, but common slogan of Filipino workers clamouring for exit visas to
perform menial work for the US occupation army in Iraq. As many as 4,000
Filipino workers are believed to be in Iraq.
In the years
following the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship (February 26, 1986) by a
military and church-backed revolt, the subsequent elected presidents have failed
to stem the ongoing deterioration of the country. The new rulers like Corazon
Aquino (1986-1992), and former general Fidel Ramos (1992-1998), simply favoured
a new set of oligarchs and set the stage for the rise to power of a corrupt
populist, Joseph Estrada. His "anti-oligarch" rhetoric brought him to the
presidential palace in 1998 with widespread support among the poor. Estrada
became an irritant to Washington and the traditional oligarchy by welcoming
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 1999 and for his populist social policies,
such as handing out thousands of land titles to urban squatters.
US-designed, upper
class-backed, street demonstrations supported by sectors of the military elite
culminated in the ouster of Estrada in January 2001. The same forces hoisted his
vice-president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to the presidency. Macapagal is a US
educated, neo-liberal economist and favourite of the US embassy. This political
putsch led to the expansion of US military basing rights and a new military
agreement, quickly signed by Macapagal after a two-year delay during Estrada’s
presidency. With the rise of Macapagal Arroyo, Washington has a reliable client.
The newly "installed"
Macapagal Arroyo quickly instituted a neo-liberal programme of privatisations,
drastic cuts for public education and public hospitals and onerous value-added
taxes, which impacted the poor and lower middle class. By 2005, the Philippine
total external and internal debt ballooned to over $ 100 billion and yearly debt
servicing exceed 30 per cent of the budget. Even 8 million overseas Filipino
workers (including a significant section of the educated professionals) sending
home $ 12.5 billion dollars of remittances in 2005 could not begin to cover debt
servicing. The Philippines bears the dubious distinction of being the only
country in Asia to have seen a drop in per capita GDP during and since the heady
years of the "Asian Tiger" boom.
Macapagal Arroyo’s
family and cronies have been implicated in the same levels of corruption as that
attributed to the deposed president Estrada. Mike Arroyo, the president’s
husband, remains in self-imposed exile in the US to avoid facing charges of
graft and fraud. Macapagal Arroyo maintains her support among the military by
offering lucrative concessions to favourite generals and key officials in the
military leading to deep discontent among the junior ranks of the armed forces
forced to survive on low wages. As a result, several mutinies of junior officers
and soldiers occurred, the largest of which was the takeover of an upscale
Manila shopping and apartment complex in July 2003 by 300 soldiers from the
special forces and the more recent uprising of Marines in January of this year.
Military intelligence
has been implicated in a campaign of bombings both in Manila and on the southern
island of Mindanao, targeting markets, buses, commuter trains, airports and
mosques. The Macapagal regime blamed a Muslim kidnapping gang, Abu Sayaf, and
used the bombings as a justification for greater militarisation of the country.
The curious timing of the bombings, for example, the December 2004 bombing of a
Manila shopping centre, which killed 15, happened very soon after a devastating
landslide burying almost 1,000 townspeople in a province near Manila, exposed
the regime’s incompetence in civil assistance.
Local journalists
with sources in the military believe the campaign of bombings has been carried
out by the regime itself to justify requests for more military "aid" from the
US.
The US Connection
In December 2002 the
US announced a significant expansion of its joint US-Philippine military
training exercises. The first contingent of US troops landing on the southern
island of Mindanao engaged in field operations against the Muslim separatists.
In early 2003, then assistant US secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz called the
Philippines the "Second Front in the War on Terror". Since then tens of
thousands of Muslim villagers have been forcibly displaced and hundreds have
been tortured, killed or disappeared. As a result, Muslim guerrilla activity has
increased.
In October 2003,
during a visit to the Philippines, Bush cited the country as a model for the
re-building of Iraq. Forgetting to mention the US invasion of the Philippines in
1898 and 13-year pacification campaign when upwards of one million Filipinos
died, Bush described the Philippines as a "model of democracy" – a bona fide
death squad democracy.
The Bush
administration’s support for the Macapagal Arroyo regime has been reciprocated:
A contingent of Philippine troops was sent to Iraq over the protests of hundreds
of thousands of Filipinos. These troops were only withdrawn when Iraqi
resistance fighters threatened to execute captured Filipino labourers in Iraq:
the Philippine economy is more dependent on remittances from its workers in west
Asia than on US aid. The lucrative reconstruction contracts, which the
Philippine elite had expected to be awarded for its services to the Bush
administration in Iraq, never materialised. During 2006, another contingent of
5,500 US soldiers are scheduled to arrive in Mindanao and the number of joint
exercises has doubled.
US troops are not
confined to the separatist stronghold in the far south of the country. More and
more "joint operations" occur in the central islands and Luzon where the
communist New Peoples Army (NPA) has been conducting a campaign against the
government for 40 years over issues of land reform and oligarchic-imperialist
control of the economy. With an estimated 10,000 fighters, the NPA is clearly
viewed as a threat to US and local ruling class interests.
Urban Popular Protests
In 2004, Macapagal
Arroyo narrowly defeated her rival in the presidential elections in a campaign
marred by violence and fraud. An audiotape released in the spring of 2005
recorded the president discussing with a top election official the rigging of
the election. Amid resignations of members of her cabinet and calls for her
resignation from the general public, she narrowly escaped a vote of impeachment
in November 2005.
Macapagal Arroyo’s
disastrous neo-liberal economic policies, the growing social and economic
deterioration of the country, frantic attempts by the professionals to escape
through immigration, moves by restive middle level officers and demonstrations
by popular mass social movements put the Philippines back in the international
news. In early February 2006, an even more devastating landslide brought on by
rains and deforestation, buried almost 2,000 townspeople on the island of Leyte.
The inability of the regime to provide even the most basic aid to the victims
angered the entire nation.
On February 23, 2006,
the eve of the 20th anniversary of the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship,
Macapagal Arroyo declared a state of emergency banning all rallies,
demonstrations and closing opposition media. She issued orders for the arrest of
59 individuals, including members of the Congress, military officers and social
critics, on charges of rebellion against her regime. Rallies were planned to
commemorate the end of the Marcos dictatorship and to protest the electoral
fraud, corruption, economic mismanage-ment and human rights violations of the
Macapagal Arroyo regime. Some rallies defied the president’s decree, went ahead
and were violently repressed.
Those charged with
rebellion included six Congress people from leftwing political parties, a human
rights attorney, retired and active military officers and social activists. Most
of the charges have no substance and are totally arbitrary. For example,
Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) congressman Crispin Beltran, age 73, veteran labour
leader and anti-Marcos activist, was arrested shortly after the emergency rule
declaration, at first on the basis of a 25-year-old charge made during the
Marcos dictatorship. When these charges were shown to have been dropped decades
earlier, he was charged with rebellion.
This is the latest of
a series of attacks on the part of the Macapagal Arroyo regime aimed
specifically at destroying class-based political parties and trade union
activity, including Bayan Muna and its coalition partners. The campaign of
assassination and disappearances of 80 members of this party alliance between
2001 and 2005, including mayors and provincial elected representatives has
finally reached the top elected representatives in the Philippine Congress. In
2006, repression turned from the countryside to the capital, from peasant
leaders to Manila-based Congress people, media, working class and left party
leaders. Of the 26 political assassinations in the first 10 weeks of 2006, three
have been Bayan Muna officials. The arbitrary arrest of congressional
representatives sends a signal to the legal left that the regime will not
tolerate dissent or challenges to its policies even from within Congress.
According to the
Karapatan, the independent human rights organisation involved in documenting and
providing legal support to victims of human rights abuses, the disappearances
and assassinations are committed by death squads in some of the most heavily
militarised areas in the Philippines. The death squads would not be able to act
with impunity without the complicity of the military. Witnesses to the killings
have themselves disappeared and the Philippine judicial system has failed to
prosecute the intellectual authors or perpetrators. Nor has the military made
any effort to investigate and arrest identified death squad leaders. Human
rights groups provide evidence that death squads operate under the protective
umbrella of regional military commands, especially the US-trained Special
Forces. Macapagal’s promotion of the notorious colonel Jovito Palparan,
(‘Butcher of Mindoro’) to general, despite extensive documentation and testimony
of gross human rights abuses points to the president’s support for
military-backed state terrorism. When Palparan was assigned to Central Luzon in
September 2005, the number of political assassinations in that region alone
jumped to 52 in four months. Prior to his promotion, the regions with the
largest number of summary executions like Eastern Visayas and Central Luzon were
under then colonel Palparan.
State of the Resistance
In the face of the disintegration of
the economy and society, and the regime’s use of force to sustain its hold on
power, faced with its gross incompetence in the face of several
natural/ecological disasters, popular resistance has spread from the countryside
to the cities. The popular mass organisations, involving peasant and indigenous
minority farmers, industrial workers, teachers, journalists, civil servants,
students, women, artists, human rights workers, lawyers and clergy have grown
despite the campaign of state terror. On the 20th anniversary of the 1986
overthrow of Marcos, tens of thousands defied the state of emergency and marched
in Manila and in cities throughout the country. Over 10,000 women defied police
bans to march on international women’s day. Students and teachers are mounting
campaigns on the campuses around the country. Former presidents, business
executives and clergy are calling for Macapagal Arroyo’s resignation and a
"smooth transition" within the elite, while the popular mass movements and their
besieged political representatives are demanding justice for the victims of
state terror, an end to US military presence, a repeal of the value added taxes,
an increase in the minimum wage, land reform, a moratorium of debt payments, re-nationalisation
of key economic sectors and consequential peace negotiations between the state
and the NPA and Muslim separatists. That Macapagal Arroyo will eventually be
forced to resign is, according to officials, a likely outcome. The question is
when and by whom?
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