|
Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to
search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts
Vol. VI, No. 39
Nov. 5 - 11, 2006 Quezon City, Philippines |
|
HOME
ARCHIVE
CONTACT
RESOURCES
ABOUT BULATLAT
|
READER FEEDBACK
(We encourage readers to dialogue with us.
Email us
your letters complaints, corrections, clarifications, etc.)
|
|
|
DEMOCRATIC SPACE
(Email us your
letters statements, press releases, manifestos, etc.) |
|
|
For
turning the screws on hot issues, Bulatlat has been awarded
the Golden Tornillo Award.
Iskandalo
Cafe
|
|
Copyright 2004 Bulatlat bulatlat@gmail.com |
|
|
|
|
STREETWISE*
Indicting the Arroyo
Regime
The PPT Second Session
indictment shows that the Philippines has not substantially moved away
from political repression and military abuse despite the ouster of a
military-backed, U.S.-propped dictatorship nor has it broken free of its
neocolonial status despite loud proclamations of being an independent and
democratic republic.
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo
BusinessWorld
Posted by Bulatlat
In simple rites held under historically significant circumstances, the
Permanent Peoples' Tribunal: Second Session on the Philippines was
convened in The Hague, the Netherlands last October 30, upon the appeal of
Philippine human rights and people's organizations. The first session on
the Philippines held twenty six years ago in 1980, in Antwerp, Belgium had
indicted the United States-backed Marcos dictatorship of grave crimes
against the Filipino people.
The government of Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has reacted to the filing
of charges by victims of grievous human rights violations with the
dismissive remark of Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, a former
military general, that this is again the handiwork of the "leftists" and
"militants," with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army
(CPP-NPA) as the "brains". Mr. Ermita concludes that this legal action is
biased and underhanded, part and parcel of the general plan to "topple the
government and establish communist rule". This, he said, is the underlying
reason behind efforts "to humiliate our President before an international
court".
Let the fair and independent-minded judge for themselves on the basis of
two important objective considerations: First, the charges and the reasons
given by complainants for bringing their case to the Permanent Peoples'
Tribunal (PPT); second, the nature, background and track record of the PPT
itself.
The victims of gross human rights violations – summary executions,
abductions and enforced disappearances, torture and massacres -- cry for
justice. The Philippine criminal justice system can offer nothing except
systematic cover-up and outright reprisal against witnesses and aggrieved
parties since the suspected perpetrators are state agents or death squads
under their direction, implementing what Mrs. Arroyo herself announced
last June as her regime's policy of "total war against the Left."
"Total war" is nothing but a policy of annihilation, not just of armed
guerillas waging a thirty seven-year-old armed struggle against the
government but legal, unarmed political and social activists and their
supporters. In the era of the U.S.-designed "war on terror," such state
policy and its bloody consequences, when implemented by states allied to
the U.S., are considered in official circles as completely understandable
and justified, not subject to international law, in particular human
rights and international humanitarian law, and met with silent complicity
if not approbation.
The Filipino people -- poor, hungry and miserable, reeling from decades of
economic policy dictates of the U.S.-dominated multilateral agencies such
as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and now the World Trade
Organization -- do not see any light at the end of the tunnel. A
succession of elite-ruled governments, albeit claiming to be democratic in
contrast to their predecessor, the Marcos dictatorship, have sustained
policy frameworks that work against the basic interests of the Filipino
people, and are lopsidedly in favor of foreign multinational corporations
and banks such as the "honorable debt policy" and neoliberal doctrines of
liberalization, deregulation and privatization. These pro-imperialist
policies are consistently implemented in a blind, servile and completely
callous way. In the era of imperialist "globalization," such actuations of
Third World regimes are applauded by international capital and justified
by economic, political and cultural institutions under its sway.
The Filipino nation, continues to suffer under an unfinished process of
decolonization; in fact, the Philippines is a neocolony of the U.S.. Thus,
the sovereign right of the Filipino people to chart their own destiny
according to their own best lights has effectively been suppressed and
undermined by their erstwhile colonizer with the indispensable help of a
series of pro-U.S. domestic regimes. As a consequence, the country
continues to play its assigned role in U.S. geopolitical strategy and acts
as a reliable cog in the superpower's war machine.
The indisputable proof: despite a constitutional prohibition against the
presence of foreign military installations and troops on Philippine soil,
thousands of U.S. troops freely move in and out of Philippine territory
throughout the year, without so much as a by-your-leave except,
presumably, perfunctory notice to some government functionary or agency.
Thus the complainants have charged the GMA and Bush governments, the IMF,
World Bank and the WTO and selected multinational corporations and banks
with violations of human rights, especially civil and political rights as
well as economic, social and cultural rights, together with violations of
the rights to national self-determination and liberation.
In a time of the U.S.-led "war of terror" in Iraq, Afghanistan, the
Balkans and other sovereign countries resisting US interventionism or that
have significant national liberation movements, the PPT is more than ever
relevant as an "international opinion tribunal, independent from any State
authority, which publicly and analytically examines cases regarding
violations of human rights and rights of peoples."
According to the Lelio Basso Foundation which set up the PPT and has the
mandate to convene it, the complaints are submitted by the victims
themselves or groups representing them. The Tribunal was founded in June
1979 in Italy by law experts, writers and other intellectuals drawn from
all regions in the world. This tribunal succeeded the Russell Tribunals I
and II which had exposed the war crimes of the 1960s and 1970s committed
in Vietnam, and was presided by Bertrand Russell, then Jean-Paul Sartre
and Lelio Basso, a renowned Italian senator.
The PPT has a track record of assembling highly respected, credible,
independent and socially conscious individuals to delve into cases of
blatant, widespread, systematic, state-sponsored/perpetrated violations of
human rights, international law and the rights of nations under the
general guidance of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples or
The Algiers Declaration adopted in 1976.
The PPT considers it a right and obligation for individuals, as citizens
of the world, to shape, develop and refine international law "in
accordance with human needs and human values."
The member jurors in the PPT First Session on the Philippines stated in
their verdict: "Such an obligation is especially strong in the present
historical period where crimes of state are widespread and intense, go
unpublished, and are often committed in concert with international
institutions, especially those institutions operating in the economic
sphere. We refuse to sit idly by and watch, without attempting to remedy,
this accumulating record of official abuse and institutional repression."
The PPT Second Session indictment shows that the Philippines has not
substantially moved away from political repression and military abuse
despite the ouster of a military-backed, U.S.-propped dictatorship nor has
it broken free of its neocolonial status despite loud proclamations of
being an independent and democratic republic.
GMA and her retinue of apologists ignore the PPT Second session on the
Philippines at their own peril even as their chief backer, the Bush
administration, is clearly on the way to being a lame duck president that
rightly deserves the American people's rejection in the coming November
mid-term U.S. polls as well as being consigned to the garbage heap of
history, earning the world peoples' scorn and lasting condemnation.
*Published in Business World
3-4 November 2006
BACK TO
TOP ■
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION ■
COMMENT
© 2006 Bulatlat
■
Alipato Media Center
Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided
its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.
|
|
|
|
|