Streetwise*
Reign
of Impunity
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo
Posted by Bulatlat
Karapatan
secretary-general Marie Hilao-Enriquez (left photo) testifies before the
U.S. Senate hearing on political killings in the Philippines. At right,
Sen. Barbara Boxer delivers her opening statement.
PHOTOS BY MERVIN TOQUERO
The vital flaw which undermines the
utility of much of the (Philippine) judicial system is the problem of
virtual impunity that prevails. This, in turn, is built upon the rampant
problem of witness vulnerability. The present message is that if you want
to preserve your life expectancy, don't act as a witness in a criminal
prosecution for killing… In a relatively poor society, in which there is
heavy dependence on community and very limited real geographical mobility,
witnesses are uniquely vulnerable when the forces accused of killings are
all too often those, or are linked to those, who are charged with ensuring
their security.
-- UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings, Philip Alston
Siche Bustamante-Gandinao, a 56 year-old farmer, married with six
children, daughter-in-law of slain Bayan Muna–Misamis Oriental provincial
chairperson Dalmacio “Tatay Daki” Gandinao, herself a member of Bayan Muna
and the Misamis Oriental Farmers Association, and a witness presented to
UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings Philip Alston last
February, was shot dead on 12 March by an unidentified assailant as she
walked home after harvesting crops with her husband and children. The
place of the incident was only 50 meters away from an army detachment; the
assailant reportedly fled in its direction.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) spokesperson, Lt. Col. Bartolome
Bacarro, was quick to blame the New People’s Army (NPA) as responsible for
the assassination: he claimed that Mrs. Gandinao had been cooperating with
the military and was thereby targeted by the NPA for liquidation. He did
not elaborate nor offer any proof of this claim.
The AFP has indeed made a habit of blaming any and all extrajudicial
killings of activists on the communist-led guerilla army. Not only is the
AFP “in denial”, as Mr. Alston pointed out, of any military/police
involvement in the alarming spate of killings, Mrs. Arroyo’s generals have
a
ready culprit and so their response is only a press release away.
How can the AFP spokesperson say that Mrs. Gandinao has been cooperating
with the military when just weeks before she had lost her father-in-law to
killers whom the family suspect to be members of military-directed death
squads? She had testified, at great risk to her own life, in a
closed-door hearing conducted by Mr. Alston during his visit to Cagayan de
Oro. Mrs. Gandinao gave the names of the men who had been casing Tatay
Daki’s house days before he was murdered. She also said her father-in-law
had warned her that she was in the AFP “order of battle” together with her
sister, Divina Bustamante-Tina, and that this meant the two of them were
already on the military’s “hit list”.
The kind of people who would malign a dead woman without batting an
eyelash is the same kind who can kill without batting an eyelash. The
callous disregard for the honor and dignity of a victim of extrajudicial
killings, brazenly discarding the facts and turning the truth on its head,
says it all for the AFP. That the Commander-in-Chief allows the military
to repeat this outrageously fictitious line ad nauseam despite the clear
findings of her own investigative body, the Melo commission, says it all
for the Arroyo administration.
The killing of yet another witness to the extrajudicial killing of
activists underscores the extreme vulnerability of such courageous yet
apparently foolhardy individuals. What immediately comes to mind is the
case of Marcelino “Ka Marcing” Beltran, president of the Alyansa ng mga
Magbubukid sa Tarlac and a survivor-witness of the Hacienda Luisita
Massacre of November 2004 who was gunned down in his own home.
As I wrote back then, when Ka Marcing testified before a fact finding
mission three days before his cold-blooded murder, “(h)e was articulate,
fearless, agitated, his words tumbling from his mouth as he narrated how
he miraculously escaped the hail of bullets even as he helped carry the
dying and the wounded to safety, away from the bloodthirsty police,
military and private security forces who relentlessly pursued the fleeing
strikers and rallyists with their guns, truncheons and boots.”
No honest-to-goodness investigation was ever conducted by the authorities.
Ka Marcing’s family decided to move away quietly and not pursue justice
for their father. To this day, the police have no suspects and no charges
have been filed: the killers have gotten away again scot free.
According to Mr. Alston, “The Witness Protection Program is impressive on
paper. In practice, however, it is deeply flawed and would seem only to be
truly effective in a very limited number of cases. The result, as one
expert suggested to me, is that 8 out of 10 strong cases, or 80 percent
fail to move from the initial investigation to the actual prosecution
stage.”
Thus the recent announcement by the Supreme Court that it will set up
special courts to try cases of extrajudicial killings of activists and
journalists, loudly applauded by Malacañang, appears to have little
relevance to bringing an end to the reign of impunity in this country.
The military, the police, the justice department, the Melo Commission and
Mrs. Arroyo herself all rue the alleged “lack of witnesses” as the main if
not the only reason investigations into the killings do not prosper. They
turn a blind eye to the well-founded distrust of government by the
victims’ families who suspect the assassins to be men in uniform, the
masterminds to be people in authority and the over-arching policy frame to
be reflected in Oplan Bantay Laya, the government’s flawed
counter-insurgency program.
They gloss over the proven danger for anyone who dare testify, especially
against agents of the state, not to mention the inaccessibility, if not
absence of, government resources to support witnesses and their families.
They keep quiet about
the fact that no human rights violator has been punished in this country
despite the fall of the Marcos dictatorship and the supposed restoration
of democratic processes and the rule of law.
Most of all, they do not acknowledge that the highest accolades and quick
promotions rendered, together with the stubborn refusal to investigate,
the likes of Gen. Jovito Palparan -- notorious for bringing about a reign
of terror and a long list of extrajudicial killings and involuntary
disappearances while dutifully implementing the government’s
counter-insurgency program – is the true measure of the Arroyo regime’s
willingness to stop the killings.
Mrs. Arroyo can end the killings today, if she wanted to. Business
World/Posted by Bulatlat
*Published in Business World
16-17 March 2007
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