Arroyo Cannot Be Expected to Comply
With Memorandum of Amnesty International
By Prof. Jose
Maria Sison
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples” Struggle
Posted by Bulatlat
Driven by
self-interest and malice, Gloria M. Arroyo cannot be expected to comply
with the memorandum of the Amnesty International for ensuring that the
Melo commission is transparent, its investigation is independently
conducted and leads to accountability and justice for the victims, in
accordance with international standards and principles of inquiry for
independent commissions on human rights violations.
In the first place,
the extrajudicial killings and adductions of unarmed legal activists who
oppose the Arroyo regime have been perpetrated with impunity by the
military, police and death squads within the framework of Oplan Bantay
Laya under the US-dictated policy of “anti-terrorism” and have served
Arroyo in her drive to suppress opposition and to retain power.
Arroyo created the
Melo commission in a futile attempt to counter the findings and
conclusions of fact-finding missions of local and international human
rights organizations, churches and professional organizations of
journalists, lawyers and others and to mislead the people of the
Philippines and the world who have been outraged by the extrajudicial
killings and abductions.
The Melo commission
is a complete creature and tool of Arroyo. It consists mostly of
barefaced flunkeys of her regime. Its measly funding comes from one of
the departments under Arroyo. It depends on the sham investigation and
disinformation done by the military and police forces that are the ones
accused of the extrajudicial killings and abductions by the surviving
victims and the colleagues, close relative and friends of those who have
been murdered or disappeared.
The Melo commission
has not given priority to looking into the complaints about 752 victims of
extrajudicial killings and 185 abductions of leaders of party list groups,
trade unionists, peasants, youth and students, women, journalists, human
rights advocates, lawyers, judges, priests and pastors and other victims.
The cases of these are well-documented by the human rights organizations
independent of the Arroyo regime.
But the Melo
commission has given highest priority to giving AFP chief of staff
Hermogenes Esperon a platform for asserting that the military
establishment is innocent of the extrajudicial killings and abductions and
for slandering the revolutionary forces and putting the blame on them.
The commission has also given the PNP Task Force Usig the platform for
peddling the patent lie that 36 per cent of the aforesaid crimes are
committed by the revolutionary forces.
The brazen lie of the
reactionary military and police that the revolutionary forces kill and
abduct progressive legal activists is calculated to facilitate further
extrajudicial killings and abductions. This crime of bloody intrigue was
a favorite dirty tactic of US psywar experts in the Phoenix Program in
Vietnam in the 1960s. The Melo commission is designed to justify further
extrajudicial killings and abductions and not to stop them. The people
have better chances of seeking justice by engaging in various forms of
struggle and ousting the Arroyo regime. Posted by Bulatlat
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