A historic event worthy of the Guinness Book of World Records may have occurred in Washington in the last week of June. The worst “torture” president that the United States has ever had met the most corrupt and brutal president ever inflicted on the Filipino people. Grotesque or farcical? George W. Bush is now credited with the horrendous deaths of nearly a million Iraqis, over four thousand American soldiers, the cruelties of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and a severe economic recession. Arroyo claims the distinction of having scored several thousand victims of paramilitary violence (903 extra-judicial killings and 193 enforced disappearances, according to the Philippine human-rights monitor Karapatan, or Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights), open bribery of officials by raiding the public treasury, unscrupulous cheating in elections, and untold kickbacks from government transactions (such as the ZTE Broadband scandal, among many) – all with impunity.

BY E. SAN JUAN, JR.
Monthly Review
HUMAN RIGHTS
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol. VIII, No. 22, July 6-12, 2008

A historic event worthy of the Guinness Book of World Records may have occurred in Washington in the last week of June. The worst “torture” president that the United States has ever had met the most corrupt and brutal president ever inflicted on the Filipino people. Grotesque or farcical? George W. Bush is now credited with the horrendous deaths of nearly a million Iraqis, over four thousand American soldiers, the cruelties of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and a severe economic recession. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo claims the distinction of having scored several thousand victims of paramilitary violence (903 extra-judicial killings and 193 enforced disappearances, according to the Philippine human-rights monitor Karapatan, or Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights), open bribery of officials by raiding the public treasury, unscrupulous cheating in elections, and untold kickbacks from government transactions (such as the ZTE Broadband scandal, among many) – all with impunity.

Scourge of Human Rights

International groups – from Amnesty International and the World Council of Churches (WCC) to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the International Association of People’s Lawyers (IAPL) – have all concurred on the outrageous truth of the “killing fields” in the U.S. neocolony. An editorial of the Philippine Star (6 June 2007) noted that the country is one of the “least peaceful countries in the world, ranking 100th among 121 in the first-ever Global Peace Index drawn up by the Economic Intelligence Unit.” United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur Philip Alston reported to the 8th session of the UN Human Rights Council that Arroyo’s “state security forces have been involved in many of the killings of left-wing activists, indigenous leaders, trade union and farm leaders and civil society organization members and that the military remains in a ‘state of denial’ over these killings” (see E. San Juan, U.S. Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines, New York, 2007). “Not a single soldier has been convicted,” Alston added, urging the Arroyo regime to end the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) policy of “systematically hunting down the leaders of [legal and open] leftist organizations” such as Bayan Muna and assassinating their members (see the website of the UN Human Rights Council).

The Arroyo regime recently defied the UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session by rejecting the recommendation to strengthen the Witness Protection Program and approve the International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances. In its comprehensive survey “Scared Silent: Impunity for Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines,” Human Rights Watch observed that in spite of public-relation ploys such as the Melo Commission and Arroyo’s refrain that there is “no state policy of killing people,” not one case has been solved, not a single military officer or soldier prosecuted for the murders and disappearances of activists such as Jonas Burgos, Luisa Posa Dominado, Sherlyn Cadapan, Karen Empeño, and thousands more (Inquirer.net, 5 October 2007).

Last year the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) concluded its meticulous appraisal of massive evidence with the judgment that the Arroyo regime and its sponsor, the Bush administration, were guilty of “gross and systematic violation of human rights, economic plunder and transgression of the Filipino people’s sovereignty.” The first session of the Tribunal on the Philippines in 1980 unequivocally condemned “the dominant economic and political role of the U.S. in the Philippines and in the region through the implementation of an imperial policy” (PPT Verdict 2007). Arroyo’s ritual obeisance to Washington may be cited as one more proof, falling in line with a tradition of subservience of the Filipino oligarchy since the time of Commonwealth President Manuel Quezon to the first president of the 1946 Philippine Republic Manuel Roxas up to Presidents Ramon Magsaysay (sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency) and Diosdado Macapagal (Arroyo’s father) to the notorious Marcos dictatorship and its unconscionable successors. No wonder both John McCain and Barack Obama parroted worn-out clichés about “Asia’s first democracy,” the Philippines as a faithful client regime during the Cold War and the current crusade against terrorists personified by politically informed combatants of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the New People’s Army.

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