Analysis
Crossing the Bridge
The U.S. government
has been criticized for its inconsistent human rights policy and for using
it as part of its proverbial "carrots and stick" strategy chiefly to gain
concessions from governments. It supports tyrannical governments and deals
with states that have gained notoriety for committing atrocities against
their own nationals.
By the Policy Study, Publication and Advocacy (PSPA) Program
Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)
Posted by
Bulatlat
The breakthrough in
bringing the issue of the human rights crisis in the Philippines to the
U.S. Congress this week has sent some mixed signals: That it would
increase pressures on the Arroyo government to take a decisive action in
stopping the political killings, or that nothing will come out of it. This
development is expected to generate new questions on what other steps need
to be done such as making the Arroyo government accountable upon show of
evidence that these cases are part of a state policy or that the chief
executive has done nothing to arrest the deterioration of the critical
human rights situation.
Initiated by the
National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), the ecumenical and
human rights delegation first visited Canada second week of March where
bishops and human rights defenders met Canadian MPs (members of
Parliament). There second leg was the trip to Washington, DC where they
presented the human rights crisis situation at a three-day Ecumenical
Advocacy Days conference. Thereafter, delegation members testified before
the U.S. Senate's subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the
committee on foreign relations and before the House of Representatives'
committee on foreign relations. They also held briefings with the State
Department. The deputy director of the Philippine National Police (PNP),
Avelino Razon, and three other armed forces and police senior officers
were refused entry into the Senate and were told not to "conduct
surveillance on the witnesses." The U.S. Congress hearings were to be
followed by meetings with the UN Human Rights Council, both in New York
and later in Geneva.
It was apparent that
key committees of the U.S. Congress were keen on pursuing the church
delegation's proposal to review U.S.-Philippine security cooperation and
military aid especially because these were being used to support a brutal
counter-insurgency program leading to violations of human rights. Some
officials of the state department have also suggested that economic and
military aid to the Arroyo government extended by the U.S. and other
countries be tied to the Philippine president's human rights record.
The decision to bring
the human rights crisis in the Philippines before the international
community notably major ecumenical bodies, the UNHRC, Canada, the U.S.
Congress and other foreign governments and institutions was actually a
foregone conclusion, achieved at several forums and conferences in the
Philippines over the last few years.
The organizations
represented by the delegation looked beyond the limited findings of the
Melo Commission and the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial,
involuntary or summary executions, with their assertion that the mounting
cases of political assassinations, forced disappearances, torture and
other violations of human rights were the result of a state-authored
counter-insurgency doctrine. To them, there was also no question that the
state's criminal justice system aside from Congress and even the
Commission on Human Rights (CHR) were either dysfunctional, uncooperative
and/or had institutional weaknesses making justice being denied to the
victims and their kin.
No legal remedies
With no legal
remedies to exhaust because these are non-existent anyway, the NCCP,
together with other church and faith organizations and human rights
watchdogs, had to raise the issue before the international community.
Indeed, families of victims, eyewitnesses, lawyers and human rights
organizations found themselves receiving death threats from the same
perpetrators of political crimes; some of them eventually went missing.
They "have agonized over the inability to cross the bridge toward justice
precisely because there is no bridge at all," thus said the 90-page
ecumenical report, "Let the Stones Cry Out" which the delegation submitted
to the Canadian Parliament, UNHRC, U.S. Congress and international
ecumenical bodies.
In their meetings
with Canadian and American legislators, the ecumenical delegation asked
their respective legislatures to review economic and security arrangements
with the Arroyo government including military aid to ensure that these do
not result in the gross and systematic violations of human rights.
However, the American legislators should have known all along that the
military aid that they allocate for the Philippines was being used to kill
and maim innocent civilians in a counter-insurgency that was tailored to
fit Bush's "war on terrorism." They should know that U.S. laws prohibit
the extension of military aid to governments known to have violated human
rights – a fact which has been consistently cited about the Philippines in
the state department's yearly human rights reports. A recent report by the
U.S. General Auditing Office (GAO) concluded that elements of the
Philippine military were involved in extra-judicial killings and other
violations of human rights. The investigation on the catastrophic results
of U.S. military aid had earlier been asked by various lawyers groups and
church congregations in the U.S. For instance, in June last year, the
National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights and the
International Association of Democratic Lawyers, called for a probe into
"the use of U.S. funding for Philippine military operations against the
legal Left that are being conducted under the guise of the war on terror."
Just the same, the
Philippine church delegation's mission to bring this demand to the U.S.
Congress is the first step toward a legislative review of the Bush policy
of support to the Arroyo government under the purview of "war against
terrorism" and "counter-insurgency" program. Moreover, this is timely
considering the fact that Congress, now dominated by the Democrats, is in
the middle of intense debates calling for the withdrawal of U.S.
occupation forces from Iraq. Necessarily, the debates will also touch on
Bush's national security strategy which includes its "counter-terrorism"
operations in the Philippines and military aid to the Arroyo government.
Congressional
review
However, the
congressional review of the Philippine-U.S. security cooperation, military
aid and the human rights issue will go through the rigors of legislative
mill to process the reactions and positions of key policy makers from the
U.S. State Department, the Pentagon and various intelligence agencies, the
U.S. Pacific Command, the U.S. Embassy and the USAID in Manila and other
agencies dealing with the Philippines. To push the agenda, it will become
necessary for the Philippine ecumenical delegation to sustain vigorous
lobbying in collaboration with other sympathetic ecumenical bodies, human
rights, advocacy and even academic groups in the U.S. This is expected
since the Arroyo government will tap its influential lobby groups in the
U.S. Congress to question the credibility and credentials of the
Philippine delegation and to market the line that giving military support
to Arroyo in the context of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency is
the best thing that ever happened to the Manila-Washington special ties.
Already, the
Pentagon, through the commander of its anti-drug task force in Southeast
Asia, Rear Admiral Paul Zukunft, has begun a publicity blitz in support of
the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) – the alleged perpetrator of
rights violations – with allegations that the New People's Army (NPA)
maintains shabu laboratories in its areas of operation. Zukunft's story is
an oblique support to the AFP's fabricated lies that the NPA is to blame
for the political killings as part of an "internal purge" – a theory which
however has been debunked by both the Melo Commission and the UN Special
Rapporteur, Philip Alston.
There is a dynamics
of policy making in Washington, D.C. with regard to the Philippine
government not necessarily between the Democrats and Republicans but
between those who believe in multilateralism and the advocates of
unilateralism. In connection with U.S. foreign policy and global security
strategy, those who push for a revival of multilateralism, i.e., using
diplomacy and cooperation with international institutions such as the
United Nations, can be found in some liberal members of Congress and the
state department, which administers its diplomatic mission in the
Philippines. Officially though, the state department has backed Arroyo's
hardline anti-communist stance by including the CPP-NPA in its "foreign
terrorist organizations" (FTO) list.
On the other hand,
the advocates of unilateralism, i.e. the "realists" and
"neo-conservatives," remain in the upperhand and are in control of the
Bush government including the Pentagon, and they include many Republicans
in Congress and conservative think tanks that are key players in the wars
in Afghanistan, Iraq and the global war against terrorism. From this
clique of war hawks and neo-conservatives come those who promote Bush's
current close security cooperation with the Arroyo government. Of course,
one can argue that multilateralism and unilateralism are two sides of the
same coin: The U.S. government adheres to multilateralism but reserves its
right to use unilateralism as a way of maintaining an independent foreign
policy (Read: aggressive global hegemony).
Inconsistent
rights policy
In fact, the U.S.
government has been criticized for its inconsistent human rights policy
and for using it as part of its proverbial "carrots and stick" strategy
chiefly to gain concessions from governments. For instance, it has accused
of China of having a poor human rights record as a means of pressuring the
Beijing government to yield to major economic concessions demanded by
Washington. Yet, it supports tyrannical governments and other states
notorious for committing atrocities against their own nationals –
reminiscent of its previous support to various dictatorships from the
1950s to 1980s including the military regimes of Marcos, Park Chung-Hee of
South Korea, General Soeharto of Indonesia, Augusto Pinochet of Chile, and
the Shah of Iran.
Today's case in point
is of course the Arroyo government. The state department may report about
the knotty human rights performance of Mrs. Arroyo but Washington
continues to extend huge amounts of military aid and pours more and more
of its intervention forces in the Philippines. It has opposed peace talks
with the communists and is extending military aid to the AFP - even if
this results in the gross and systematic violations of human rights - with
the objective of forcing the "enemies of the state" to surrender.
Still, unlike in the
aftermath of 9/11, the upsurge of the anti-war movement in the U.S. and
the Philippine progressive church's renewed linkages with human rights,
ecumenical, academic and immigrant groups in America are new grounds which
the struggle for the defense of human rights in the Philippines can tap to
help bring into fruition efforts to render justice to the victims of human
rights violations in the country. The complaints with the UNHRC will
likely open more quasi-legal investigations and the possible non-renewal
of the Philippine government's membership in the Council when it faces a
universal periodic review (UPR) in May this year. The struggle for human
rights will continue in the Philippines but its solidarity support appears
to be boundless and is gaining sympathies not only in America but
throughout the world as well. Posted by Bulatlat
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