The issues of extrajudicial killings and media killings just wouldn’t go away. It is not because the Macapagal-Arroyo administration is not being given a chance to solve it. Nor is it part of a destabilization plot. These issues continue to hound Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo because it continues to be committed with impunity.
BY BENJIE OLIVEROS
ANALYSIS
Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 19, June 17-26, 2007
The issues of extrajudicial killings and media killings just wouldn’t go away. It is not because the Macapagal-Arroyo administration is not being given a chance to solve it. Nor is it part of a destabilization plot. These issues continue to hound Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo because it continues to be committed with impunity.
This week, on June 18 to be exact, experts on human rights and international humanitarian law, forensics, and investigation from the European Union would arrive for a ten-day technical mission to evaluate the assistance needed by the Philippine government in strengthening its capability in addressing the problem of extrajudicial killings such as in the areas of establishing special courts, training prosecutors and judges, strengthening witness protection programs, improving forensic skills, and raising awareness on human rights among officers and men of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP). But everything would come to naught if the mission would do merely as it announced: to assess the assistance needed by the Macapagal-Arroyo administration in addressing the problem of extrajudicial killings. An expert of the UN Philip Alston already showed what the government needs to do in addressing the problem: it needs to get out of its “state of denial.”
Militant organizations, as well as independent analysts concerned about the issue, have been saying all along that these extrajudicial killings are being committed as part of the government’s counterinsurgency program dubbed Oplan Bantay Laya (Operation Guard Freedom). And recently, Senator-elect Antonio Trillanes, who was a former Navy lieutenant before being charged with coup d’ etat in connection with the failed Oakwood Mutiny, confirmed that the death squads or special teams assigned to carry out political killings and abductions were “composite teams run by the intelligence community, including intelligence units from each major service command.”
Trillanes’s revelation is consistent with the documents provided to media about Oplan Bantay Laya. First, that these are all part of “target research” meant to identify and neutralize key leaders of “sectoral front organizations” who are listed in a “ sectoral Order of Battle.” And second, it is the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) through its units and operatives from the national down to the battalion level which is supervising and carrying out this murderous project. To be precise, these operations are carried out by units and personnel of the Military Intelligence Group-Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (MIG-ISAFP) lodged at the battalion level. These units are given “Intelligence Task Allocations,” with quarterly targets for “neutralization.” The ISAFP is comprised by composite teams of intelligence operatives from the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
And the AFP does not need training on how to address the problem of extrajudicial killings. On the contrary, they have been receiving training on how to carry out these types of operations. What do you think is being tackled in U.S.-RP joint military exercises and trainings on counter-terror operations?
Two underlying principles are integral to U.S. counterinsurgency operations. First, the guerrilla/terrorist assumes an illegal status and therefore his life is forfeit if apprehended. Second, the guerrilla uses terror to subjugate the local population and can therefore be effectively neutralized by the use of counter-terror by the counter-insurgent.
“Terror Operations,” by the counterinsurgent includes assassinations, disappearances, and mass executions. These terror operations were implemented by the U.S. and its puppet armies in many countries in the 1980s and recently in Iraq. Justification for terror operations can be read in U.S. training manuals.
No matter how many times they deny it, extrajudicial killings are part of a program of the Macapagal-Arroyo administration to achieve its goal of defeating the CPP-NPA (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army) by 2010. And this program does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, revolutionaries and legal activists. For as long as the latter, according to Oplan Bantay Laya documents, espouses the same program as the CPP-NPA.
While not part of official policy, media killings are likewise engendered by the Macapagal-Arroyo administration. The culture of impunity it generated and its disdain for media emboldens those who want to silence critical media people exposing corruption in the provinces. If the government can kill its perceived enemies with impunity so can local politician-warlords and crime syndicates. How can the government protect media from attacks when it is one of the first institutions the government attacked when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared a state of national emergency? How can the Macapagal-Arroyo administration protect media from libel suits when the husband of the president Jose Miguel Arroyo filed the most number of libel suits an individual filed in the country’s history?
How can the government protect its critics from attack when it cannot protect Maguindanao school surpervisor Musa Dimasidsing whose only deed was to reveal that teachers were forced by heavily armed men to fill up ballots with the names of senatorial candidates of Team Unity? How can the Macapagal-Arroyo administration protect its critics from local politician-warlords who are its allies? How can the Macapagal-Arroyo administration protect those exposing corruption when it is enmeshed in corruption scandals which it refuses to confront?
For the Macapagal-Arroyo administration to break the cycle of violence once and for all, it has to change its policy, especially its counter-insurgency program, its mind-set, its practices, and even its allies. If not, the Filipino people may have to undertake the changes themselves. (Bulatlat.com)
