HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

Rights Groups Blame Killings on Military’s Oplan Bantay Laya

Of the 601 victims of political killings in the last five years, many were felled by motorcycle-riding assasins.  The Armed Forces of the Philippines claims a “purge” within the revolutionary movement is to be blamed. But human rights watch groups point to death squads formed under Oplan Bantay Laya, the Arroyo government’s counterinsurgency program.

BY DABET CASTANEDA
Bulatlat

STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE: Karapatan secretary-general Marie Hilao-Enriquez at a gathering for the families of the victims of political killings, Manila, May 20, 2006 PHOTO BY AYA SANTOS

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO - In the evening of May 13, two burly men on a motorcycle went to the Mercy Videoke Bar, one small sing-along bar in front of the San Miguel Corporation Brewery in Quebiawan village here, some 45 km. north of Manila. The bar’s owner, Blessie, 44, said in an interview with Bulatlat that the men went around the bar joints asking for “Kong Boy” (Kong is the short term for Koyang, Pampango word for Kuya or older brother). “Kong Boy” is Blessie’s husband Manuel Nardo, 40, an electrician and an SMB contractual worker. He was village coordinator of the party-list group Bayan Muna (People First), and was active in mass actions.  He joined protests against the rehabilitation of the North Luzon Railways (NorthRail Project), one of the flagship projects of the Arroyo administration in Central Luzon.

Nardo was also known as a close friend of Roman Polintan, chair of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance) in Central Luzon. Blessie said for many years, her husband usually drove Polintan to his appointments using Nardo’s motorcycle.

Murder

The two men who visited Nardo on the night of May 13 left when told that Nardo was not around.

Blessie said they went back, riding the same motorcycle at 9:30 p.m. the next night, and finally met Nardo.

The unsuspecting Nardo invited the two inside. Blessie, who was looking out from the window, said Nardo was two steps ahead of the men as he led them inside the bar.

But before Nardo could get in, Blessie heard gunshots. As she rushed out, she saw her husband bloodied and lying prone on the ground.

She then saw Nardo’s assailants casually board their motorcycle and drove towards the highway. Blessie rushed her husband to the hospital but he was dead on arrival.

Task force

Reacting quickly to Nardo’s death, the Philippine National Police (PNP) formed Task Force Usig and named Deputy Director General Avelino Razon as head. In his media statements, Razon said the task force would investigate the escalating incidents of killings of what the government called “Left-wing activists” or “militants.”

The task force has documented 122 killings of activists during the Arroyo administration. It claimed that military or paramilitary units were suspects in 25 of those cases while 13 deaths were the handiwork of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) as part of its so-called “purge.”

In its official website, the Philippine Revolution Web Central, the CPP admitted to a purge within its ranks in the mid-1980s, through its nationwide campaign to flush out suspected deep penetration agents in the revolutionary movement.

CPP documents admitted having made grave errors in implementing the anti-DPA campaign, which resulted in human rights abuses and violation of the rights of individual and due process.

The campaign was officially ended in 1992 when the “Second Great Rectification Movement” was launched to correct the Party’s “Left-opportunist” errors.

 In his recent statements to media, CPP spokesperson Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal condemned government claims that the spate of political killings is part of yet another purge in the CPP. He said these claims were just used “to prop up their psywar offensive.”

 Bantay Laya

Girlie Padilla, acting secretary general of the church-based human rights group Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace (EMJP), said the deplorable human rights situation in the country is a result of the  military’s Operation Plan Bantay Laya (Defend Freedom).

In its draft primer, the EMJP and the human rights organization Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of Peoples’ Rights) said the implementation of Bantay Laya started in 2002 and was originally aimed at neutralizing the bandit Abu Sayyaf Group and other Muslim Secessionists Groups in Mindanao, southern Philippines.

The primer showed that Bantay Laya is being implemented in accordance with the U.S. war on terror. The Macapagal-Arroyo administration has, in fact, received a $4.6 billion military and economic package in 2004 and a $30 million budget for anti-insurgency military exercises.

In 2003, however, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) shifted its anti-insurgency campaign towards the CPP and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), the primer revealed.

The main target of Bantay Laya, the primer added, is to destroy the CPP’s political infrastructure and its so-called legal fronts. “At this point, the military do not differentiate legal and illegal armed groups anymore. That meant legal personalities are considered fair game,” Padilla said.

Padilla said Bantay Laya targeted seven priority regions considered by the military as strongholds of the CPP-NPA, namely: Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog, Central Visayas, Bicol, Northern Mindanao-CARAGA, Southern Mindanao-Compostela Valley and the Ilocos-Cordillera Region.

Implementation

The official documentation of EMJP and Karapatan showed that the said regions suffered the biggest number of political killings.

From January to May 2006 alone, it documented a total of 22 victims of human rights violations in Central Luzon, 10 in Southern Tagalog and seven each in Bicol and Southern Mindanao.

From January 2001 to May 17 this year, EMJP and Karapatan tallied a total of 601 victims of extra-judicial killings, 151 victims of enforced disappearances. The human rights group is still completing its documentation of hundreds of victims of arrests, torture and detention, and tens of thousands of victims of forced evacuation and other forms of human rights violations.

In its record, the rights watchdog documented that 243 victims of human rights violations were activists who belonged to what the military considered “Left-wing organizations” such as Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance), Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU or May First Movement), Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP or Peasant Alliance in the Philippines) and their local affiliations. The number includes 93 members and leaders of Bayan Muna.

The rest of the victims who had no known organization were civilians who were named by the military as “sympathizers” of the CPP-NPA, Padilla said.

Of the 243 victims who were members of legal organization, 83 were high-profile leaders who had top positions such as president, chairperson or secretary general. Jose Doton, the latest victim who was gunned down on May 16, was secretary general of Bayan in Pangasinan, a province in Central Luzon some 170 km. north of Manila.

Of the 83 leaders, 27 came from Central Luzon, 16 from Southern Tagalog, eight from Eastern Vizayas, seven from Bicol, four each from Ilocos-Cordillera and Southern Mindanao, three each from Northern Minadanao-Caraga and Central Vizayas, and two each from Central Vizayas, Far South and Western Mindanao.

Death squads

In a separate interview, Karapatan secretary general Marie Hilao-Enriquez said their investigations show the involvement of the military’s death squads in the killings and failed murder attempts.

Death squads, Hilao-Enriquez said, were motorcycle-riding men wearing dark clothes and ski-masks and armed with high calibre pistols or rifles. Karapatan records show that there were 41 killings that involved this kind of operation, and were implemented nationwide.

The murder of Nardo bore all the trademarks of a death squad operation, she said.

In at least three cases, the victims of failed assassinations have identified their hit men as soldiers or members of the military intelligence units.

In Misamis Occidental for example, Rev. Marilou Tinambacan identified the killers of her husband Rev. Jemias Tinambacan on May 9 as a certain Mamay Guimalan, an identified military intelligence agent. Tinambacan said Guimalan and two others rode a black and blue DT Yamaha-Type motorcycle when they attacked her and her husband.

Knowing the enemy

Padilla said the intensity of the implementation of Bantay Laya was seen last year after the AFP’s Northern Luzon Command (NolCom) presented to the media the controversial powerpoint “Knowing the Enemy.”

The powerpoint presentation declared the then three-month old strike of farm and mill workers of Hacienda Luisita as a “matter of national security” and named leaders and supporters of the strike as fronts of the CPP in the vast sugar plantation.

Hacienda Luisita is owned and operated by the influential Cojuangco clan of Tarlac province in Central Luzon. Luisita farm and mill workers staged a strike on Nov. 6, 2004 after Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) negotiations bogged down. Ten days after, police and military men opened fired on strikers to disperse the picketline, killing seven farm workers and wounding more than a hundred.

In early 2005, two staunch supporters of the strike were also killed. Tarlac City Councilor Abel Ladera was shot at the chest by a hitman on board a van at high noon of March 3 a few meters away from the NolCom headquarters along the McArthur hi-way. Ten days later, on March 13, Aglipayan priest William Tadena was ambushed by motorcycle-riding men wearing ski-masks in Barangay Guevarra, La Paz, Tarlac.

Striking workers were even more shocked on Oct. 25 last year when the mill workers’ union president Ricardo Ramos was shot in the head by suspected soldiers who manned the military detachment a few meters away from where Ramos was killed.

The soldiers were later identified as Roderick Dela Cruz and Romeo Castillo. Dela Cruz is known in the hacienda by the name of “Joshua” while Castillo introduced himself as “Rolly,” according to witnesses of the Ramos murder.

But the NolCom denied the accusation. Instead, it pointed to the CPP as the culprit. In fact, after a court case was filed against the soldiers, a letter allegedly from the Josepino Corpuz Command of the NPA Central Luzon was submitted in court by the Nolcom.  In the letter, the NPA admitted having killed Ramos.

However, in a statement issued to media, the NPA Command denied having issued the letter and said the military is evading its accountability in the murder and is using the NPA as scapegoat.

Even before the Luisita killings, in 2002, Army Spokesperson Lt. Col. Jose Mabanta claimed that a second wave of purge within the CPP was responsible for the spate of killings and abductions of activists and their supporters in Southern and Central Luzon.

In 2005, police investigations again pointed to the CPP-NPA as responsible for the murder of Romeo Sanchez who was killed in Baguio City on March 9, and the assassination attempt on Atty. Charles Juloya in Aringgay, La Union.  The police likewise blamed the CPP-NPA for the disappearance of Danilo Macapagal in Nueva Ecija and the Viray brothers in Pampanga.

Early this year,  the March 17 killing of union leader Tirso Cruz inside Hacienda Luisita was also blamed by the Nolcom on the NPA.

Who’s the culprit?

Hilao-Enriquez, a survivor of Martial Law, alleged that the military is using the so-called CPP purge as a scapegoat.

“The families of the victims who have come to seek our help point to the military as the perpetrators. None of our clients suspect the NPA as the ones responsible for the death or disappearance of their kin,” she said.

Eduardo Diansuy, Public Information Officer of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), said that their investigations arrived at the same results.  

“The families of the victims suspect the military or the police as those behind the violations. On the basis of investigation reports, most of the perpetrators are perceived to belong to the military or paramilitary arms of the government,” he said.

He noted that the complaints against the NPA were filed by the soldiers themselves. “However, the investigations against the NPA never prosper because it is impossible to identify and locate them. They are known by the military only by their aliases,” he said.

In a statement, CHR commissioners called on the government, particularly the military to conduct investigations on the indiscriminate killings committed against civilians especially activists.

“Sadly, the reported offenders belong to their (the police and military) ranks,” he said. Bulatlat

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