HUMAN
RIGHTS WATCH
Bishop Says Arroyo’s
All-Out War Promotes Death
A Catholic bishop said
that the all-out war declared by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo against
the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) is a
promotion of death. He also said the declaration of all-out war after the
abolition of the death penalty is a “contradiction of policy.”
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN
REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
TALKING ABOUT PEACE:
Bp. Julio Xavier Labayen shares reflections on the GRP-NDFP
negotiations during the book launch at the JMC office in Quezon City,
June 26
ARKIBONG BAYAN
PHOTO |
A Catholic bishop
said that the all-out war declared by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
against the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA)
is a promotion of death. He also said the declaration of all-out war after
the abolition of the death penalty is a “contradiction of policy.”
Bishop Emeritus Julio
Xavier Labayen of the Roman Catholic church’s Prelature of Infanta, Quezon
made this observation in an interview with Bulatlat on June 26,
during the launching of The GRP-NDFP Peace Negotiations: Major Written
Agreements & Outstanding Issues, a book published by the National
Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) Human Rights Monitoring
Committee containing all 17 major written agreements in its peace
negotiations with the Philippine government.
“See, the all-out war
declared by President Arroyo is a contradiction of her own actions,”
Labayen said. “She has abolished the death penalty and the all-out war is
really to promote death. So that, really, is a contradiction.”
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Arroyo recently
issued an order providing the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and
the Philippine National Police (PNP) with an additional P1-billion budget
to crush the “communist insurgency” in two years. The order came just a
few weeks after Arroyo signed into law a bill abolishing the death
penalty.
After abolishing the
death penalty, Arroyo continues to draw flak from various quarters –
including the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP)
– for the spate of extra-judicial killings that have occurred under her
administration.
As of June 24, the
human rights group Karapatan (Alliance
for the Advancement of People’s Rights) has documented a total of 690
extra-judicial killings since 2001, when Arroyo was catapulted to power
through a popular uprising. Of these, Karapatan data further show, 301
were confirmed to have been affiliated with cause-oriented groups. The
victims include church people, journalists, and lawyers.
Activist groups have
predicted that the provision of an additional P1-billion budget to the AFP
and the PNP would give rise to the escalation of extra-judicial killings.
NDFP chief political
consultant Jose Maria Sison, who has been on exile in The Netherlands
since his passport was cancelled by the Philippine government in 1988,
meanwhile told Bulatlat in an e-mail interview after the book
launch that the additional funds for the AFP and the PNP would result in
more human rights violations. He also said that the additional funds
cannot destroy the armed revolutionary movement.
“Most of it will go
to corruption through overpriced purchases of supplies and ghost
projects,” Sison said. “More appropriations for the military, police and
paramilitary will only aggravate the socio-economic and political crisis
of the ruling system. More wastage of public funds and more human rights
violations can only outrage the people and drive them to wage armed
revolution.”
Sison also took issue
with the statement of Sen. Ramon Magsaysay, Jr. in a June 26 radio
interview that the AFP should use part of the P1-billion additional budget
for anti-poverty projects if the government wants to
succeed in the campaign to resolve the armed conflict.
“Within
the ruling system, especially under the current Gloria M. Arroyo regime,
any amount of money that is supposed to be for anti-poverty projects will
only end up in the pockets of the corrupt government officials and their
cronies and families,” Sison said. “The bigger the amount for so-called
anti-poverty projects, the bigger the amount for corruption among the high
bureaucrats of the regime.”
Both Labayen and
Sison criticized the proposal by Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz, Jr. of
solving the “insurgency” through what he described as development.
“Insurgents promote
conflict to block development and further spawn poverty,” Cruz said in an
article published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer last June 24.
“Insurgents exploit grievances created by these conditions to recruit
adherents or secure safe havens. This symbiotic relationship must be
stopped. Together, we must drain the pond of poverty and injustice that
breeds terrorism and insurgency.”
“We shall continue to
win hearts and minds with the implementation this year of the Kalayaan
Barangays program by the AFP Corps of Engineers to complement other
efforts,” Cruz further said. “We will provide electricity, potable water,
access roads, schoolhouses, medical facilities and livelihood
opportunities to around 500 ‘barangay’ (villages) each year. With this and
other government programs, we will present development as an alternative
to violence, which is all that terrorists and insurgents have to offer.”
“Sec. Avelino Cruz
looks like an idiot trying to deny the reality of the ruling system of
exploitation and oppression by big compradors, big landlords and high
corrupt officials like him, who are all in the service of the U.S. and
other imperialist powers,” Sison said when asked for a reaction to Cruz’s
statement. “It is this ruling system of greed and terror that drives the
people to wage revolution.”
Labayen, for his
part, said the government is misusing words when it presents “development”
as an alternative to violence.
“I think we do not
understand the words that we are using, what development is,” Labayen
said. “We have a saying: ‘Kapag ang tao’y nagmukhang pera, hindi na
mukhang tao’ (When a person becomes obsessed with money, he ceases
acting like a human being). Money becomes more important than the human
being, so the human being is used to make money. This should be qualified:
what is development? That’s why the church guides us by saying that
development must start with the human subject and must always come back to
the human subject and other relationships of the human subject: man and
man, and man and nature.” Bulatlat
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© 2006 Bulatlat
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