This story was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com).
Vol. VI, No. 21, July 2-8, 2006

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

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.”

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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