Arroyo has long been facing calls for her resignation or removal from power because of her government’s implementation of what cause-oriented groups describe as “anti-national and anti-people” policies. These calls intensified in the latter half of 2005 following renewed allegations that she cheated her way to victory in the 2004 election, where she was supposed to have received a fresh mandate three years after being catapulted to power through a popular uprising. The recent results of various opinion surveys show as much as 65 percent of respondents wanting Arroyo out of office.
Asked why the political persecution and physical annihilation appear to be concentrated on representatives, members and supporters of the progressive party-list groups and not on other opposition groups, Casiño said the government is focused on wiping out the legal Left because it has the numbers and the capacity to mobilize multitudes. “When they’re done with the Left, the other opposition figures will be next,” he pointed out.
Persecution and annihilation
This, however, is not the first time that Bayan Muna and the other progressive party-list groups have experienced what they describe as “political persecution,” Casiño said.
In particular, he said, Bayan Muna – which went into the electoral contest three years ahead of Anakpawis and GWP – had experienced Red-smearing as early as the 2001 election campaign.
“There were attempts even then to brand Bayan Muna as a party-list group organizationally linked with the underground Left,” he said. “These, however, were not as intense as they would be in the next few years.”
In 2004, National Security Adviser Norberto Goonzales came out with what he called an expose branding six progressive party-list groups – Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, GWP, Anak ng Bayan (Sons and Daughters of the People) Youth Party, Migrante Sectoral Party (MSP), and Suara Bangsamoro (Voice of the Moro People) – as “front organizations” of the clandestine CPP and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA). A year later, the six party-list groups would appear among other groups as “enemies of the state” in a powerpoint presentation of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP), titled Knowing the Enemy.
The so-called “enemies of the state” included such groups as the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP), the Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI or the Philippine Independent Church), the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP), the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA), IBON Foundation, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), and the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP).
And now, they have the DOJ lodging rebellion charges against them – two cases in a span of less than three months.
It is not just what they describe as “political persecution” that they have to contend with, however.
“Bayan Muna and the other progressive party-list groups would not mind political persecution by itself,” Casiño said. “The thing is, the political persecution comes with the physical annihilation of our members and supporters.”
Based on data from the human rights group Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights), there has been a total of 603 political killings since 2001 – the year that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was catapulted to power through a popular uprising. Of the 585, Karapatan data further show, 221 were confirmed to be affiliated with cause-oriented groups.
Ninety-three of the victims were Bayan Muna members. Anakpawis and GWP likewise have their own lists of casualties included in the total count of 603.
“The killings came in various waves,” Casiño said. “The first was in 2002, then in 2004 and the first half of 2005. There was a slump during the time of the impeachment complaint, but it intensified again and it is getting worse and worse.”
“Before, at least, they would ‘prepare the ground’ for the killings,” he added. “Shortly before being killed, the reputations of the targets would be smeared systematically. But now they no longer ‘prepare the ground’ – they just kill.”
