Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts

Vol. V,    No. 7      March 20 - 26, 2005      Quezon City, Philippines

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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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© 2004 Bulatlat  Alipato Publications

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