News Analysis
War on Terror as Reign of Terror
In Central Luzon
north of Manila, there’s hardly a week without a throng of mourners
joining a funeral to bury someone. That someone is a farm worker, a
peasant leader, even a priest or a city councilor. Most of those to be
buried are affiliated with progressive party-list groups. All were felled
by an assassin’s bullet.
By Bobby Tuazon
Bulatlat
In Central Luzon north of Manila,
there’s hardly a week without a throng of mourners ambling their way in a
funeral to bury someone. That someone is a farm worker, a peasant leader,
even a priest or a city councilor. Most of those to be buried are
affiliated with progressive party-list groups. All were felled by an
assassin’s bullet. All killings were executed professionally. In varying
degrees, similar scenes are taking place in other provinces – in La Union,
Leyte, Quezon and elsewhere.
Since January this year, at least 13
have been buried in Central Luzon region alone; others were abducted
without a trace. Similar cases have happened elsewhere. Romeo T. Capulong,
a well-known human rights lawyer and UN judge ad litem, nearly met the
same fate in Nueva Ecija: his would-be assassins sped away on board a van
after sensing that the lawyer’s house was guarded by sympathetic barangay
tanods (village security unit).
In just two weeks, three of the victims
were gunned down one after the other: Young Tarlac Councilor Abelardo
Ladera, Fr. William Tadena and peasant leader Victor “Tang Ben” Concepcion.
All three had supported the strike of the farm workers at Hacienda Luisita,
120 kms north of Manila. Though sickly at 67, Concepcion was serving as
secretary general of the peasant group Aguman da reng Maglalautang
Capampangan and coordinator of the Anakpawis political party when he was
assassinated in Angeles City.
The dead and those who have disappeared
are no ordinary souls – they earned the ire of the powers-that-be for
fighting a cause. That cause is either asking for what is rightfully
theirs – decent wages and a small lot to farm, as in Hacienda Luisita; or
protesting human rights violations and the militarization of many rural
towns; or organizing communities for the next electoral struggle. All were
unarmed, were loved by their mass of constituents and belonged to
legitimate and increasingly popular organizations. They were outspoken
against other issues – like the onerous VAT that the government wants
enforced for debt-servicing or the continuing war games between government
and U.S. forces that infringe on the country’s sovereignty.
Politically-motivated
In short, their killings were
politically-motivated. This is no martial law - but it could be worse than
martial law itself. Is it low-intensity conflict (LIC) Part 2 or is it the
“Indonesian solution”?
In a country that has seen no real
difference between the martial law period in the 1970s-1980s and today in
terms of continuing rights violations, the recent killings, disappearances
and other human rights cases appear to be premeditated by a campaign to
stifle dissent and dismantle the legal apparatus of the progressive
movement in the Philippines.
Under President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo,
the killing and abduction of progressive leaders and activists who are
affiliated with the people’s democratic movement (now totaling,
conservatively, at least 300) all over the country began to escalate after
Bayan Muna (people first) topped the May 2001 party-list elections. The
spate of killings where the victims included human rights advocates,
lawyers and local officials began in Oriental Mindoro, an island province
west of Manila.
Shortly thereafter, a newsletter of the
Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) named several people’s organizations
and party-list groups – the same groups that helped bring Macapagal-Arroyo
to the presidency in the successful oust-Estrada movement – as “terrorist”
groups that should be “neutralized.” “Neutralize” in the military parlance
is to be silenced or, in the fascist mindset, to mark for “liquidation.”
War on terror
Macapagal-Arroyo’s “war on terror” –
launched following U.S. President George W. Bush’s declaring the
Philippines as the “second front” in his global and indefinite “war on
terror” – began to target not only the bandit Abu Sayyaf group but also
militant leaders and activists. In her national security policy, militant
people’s organizations were lumped with the New People’s Army (NPA) as the
country’s top “national security threat” even as the NPA itself, through
the recommendation of defense and military officials, was included in the
foreign terrorist organization lists of the U.S. state department and
other foreign governments.
Activists cannot forget the time when
the President called labor leader and now representative Crispin Beltran
as a “communist” simply because he disagreed with her anti-people policies
and was supporting a transport strike. With this tag, Beltran became a
fair target of military assassination.
The renewed counter-insurgency policy –
now renamed as “anti-terror” campaign – adopted by Macapagal-Arroyo and
AFP intensified the use of psywar tactics to demonize the legitimate
people’s organizations particularly the party-list groups as “terrorist”
or “terrorist fronts.” At the same time, the AFP called for the organizing
of more paramilitary units even as, coincidentally, the arming and
deployment of anti-communist fanatics and vigilantes – often including
members of factions who had bolted from the NPA – was also begun.
Meantime, U.S. military aid was increased and U.S.-directed military
training began to focus on counter-insurgency strategy and tactics. Most
recently, the joint war exercises began to be held in known NPA turfs such
as in Central and Southern Luzon.
No coincidence
It was no coincidence that as this
national security policy was – and continues to be – in effect, scores of
extra-judicial killings and abductions involving mass leaders and
activists took place. But this demonization and vicious campaign directed
against government’s most effective critics and adversary proved to be not
the only component of government’s security policy. The brutal solution to
political dissent and the revolutionary movement also required
legitimization a la Marcos PDs through the enactment of an anti-terrorism
bill (ATB) and the revival of the bill for a national ID system.
Essentially the ATB seeks to eliminate the boundary between simple
political dissent and “terrorism” and equate the assertion of one’s bill
of rights with abetting - or as an act of - terrorism. Now the AFP
hierarchy wants a media gag on the coverage of “terrorist,” i.e. critical
issues, included in the proposed ATB.
While the use of violence has become
rampant, the government is luring the underground Left through the
National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) to go back to the
peace negotiations. But the objective of the government and defense-military
officials is to pressure the NDFP to capitulate. To do this, government is
escalating the use of violence against the Left’s alleged front
organizations while dangling the terrorist label: The underground Left
including NDFP senior political consultant Jose Maria Sison will be
scrapped from the list if they capitulate.
The spate of killings reportedly
perpetrated by the military and other state forces has not gone unnoticed
in Congress, the Commission on Human Rights, the justice department as
well as in a number of international bodies and rights watchdogs such as
the Amnesty International most of whom agree that government forces are
leading human rights violators. But a general policy of denial,
indifference and arrogance pervades at the highest levels of government
and, in fact, Macapagal-Arroyo herself is endorsing the reign of terror
against legitimate dissent by rewarding the alleged perpetrators from the
AFP with promotions and constant pledges of salary increases and other
perks. AFP generals often twist facts and underestimate the intelligence
of ordinary Filipinos by blaming the NPA for the crimes ostensibly to
generate popular outrage and take more recruits into its ranks.
Logistics and record
The systematic killing of mass leaders
and activists can be sustained on a nationwide scale only by an
institution that has both the logistics and the carte blanche or blanket
authority to commit such atrocities with impunity without being held
accountable. It is the AFP, based on human rights reports here and abroad,
that has the record of atrocities which appear to be backed by a security
policy and which began with Marcos rule and was continued by the
dictator’s successors’ “total war” policy and “war on terror.” As Judge
Capulong would put it, one does not need concrete evidence to prove that
state terrorism is taking place all over the country – the “pattern and
practice” of endless killings and abductions already attests to it.
In Central Luzon, the Luisita land and
labor issues and government’s own interest to build a multi-million
highway linking the region’s so-called industrial and trade zones
harmonized with the military’s anti-terror campaign. This confluence of
interests has erupted in mass killings – 12 have so far been murdered
there including the seven farm workers who were massacred by security
forces on Nov. 16 last year. The Cojuangco-Aquino family which owns the
Hacienda Luisita is closely allied to the incumbent President.
But if government believes that its
provocative actions and the application of what by indications is
increasingly an “Indonesian solution”* will force the Left to finally give
up its cause then it should perhaps think again. Repression during the
Marcos dictatorship enraged the people more. As the guerrillas said then,
Marcos became the biggest recruiter for the NPA. Bulatlat
(* “Indonesian
solution” refers to the CIA-backed summary execution of some 500,000
suspected communists in Indonesia in 1965, with the chief architect,
General Soeharto, taking power thereafter. The Soeharto dictatorship,
supported by the U.S.
government, lasted until 1998.)
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