Philippines: The Killing Fields of Asia
By James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya
Counterpunch.org
Posted by Bulatlat
US-backed
repression soars under President Gloria Macapagal.
Since President
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo joined the US global "War on Terrorism", the
Philippines has become the site of an on-going undeclared war against
peasant and union activists, progressive political dissidents and
lawmakers, human rights lawyers and activists, women leaders and a wide
range of print and broadcast journalists. Because of the links between the
Army, the regime and the death squads, political assassinations take place
in an atmosphere of absolute impunity. The vast majority of the attacks
occur in the countryside and provincial towns. The reign of terror in the
Philippines is of similar scope and depth as in Colombia. Unlike Colombia,
the rampaging state terrorism has not drawn sufficient attention, le3t
alone outcry, from international public opinion.
Between 2001 and 2006
hundreds of killings, disappearances, death threats and cases of torture
have been documented by the independent human rights center, KARAPATAN ,
and the church-linked Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and
Research. Since Macapagal Arroyo came to power in 2001 there have been 400
documented extrajudicial killings. In 2004, 63 were killed and in 2005,
179 were assassinated and another 46 disappeared and presumed dead. So far
in the first two months of 2006 there have been 26 documented political
assassinations.
An analysis of the
class and social background of the victims of this systematic state terror
in 2005 demonstrates that the largest sector, about 70, have been peasants
and peasant leaders involved in land and farm labor disputes. The military
has invariably accused the murdered and disappeared peasants of links to
or sympathy with the communist guerrillas or Muslim separatists. The
victims include members of the national farmers' association, Kilusang
Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), as well as Igorot, Agta and Moro indigenous
minority peasant leaders involved in protecting their lands. One notorious
massacre occurred in late November 2005 when 47 peasants and their legal
representatives held an open, public meeting over a land dispute in Palo,
Leyte in the Visayas. A large force of soldiers surrounded and attacked
the meeting killing 9 peasants outright and arresting over a dozen. An
additional 18 'disappeared' and are presumed dead. The 'Palo Massacre' of
the members of the San Agustin Farmers Beneficiaries Cooperative and
Alang-Alang Small Farmers Association was at first presented by the armed
forces as a military encounter with the New Peoples Army and a few
homemade weapons were planted on the victims. In this, as in all other
cases, none of the perpetrators have been punished and there has been no
official investigation.
Workers and labor
leaders form the next largest group of victims of assassination (at least
18) not including the disappeared and presumed dead. Members of a national
labor federation, Kilusan Mayo Uno (May First Movement), Nestle's Worker's
Union, Central Azucareara de Tarlac, Negros Federation of Sugar Workers, a
leader of the Department of Agrarian Reform Employee Association, regional
college employee union leaders and various militants in both the
electrical company and bus company employee unions were murdered in 2005.
Earlier in 2005, 26
unarmed Muslim detainees in a military prison in Manila were shot
protesting against their prolonged and arbitrary detention, lack of a
trial date and horrific prison conditions. These men were mostly vendors
and displaced peasants and fishermen living with their families in Manila.
They were accused , but never convicted, of membership in the 'Abu Sayaf'
kidnapping gang.
Seven print and radio
journalists and writers were killed in 2005 as well as seven attorneys and
judges involved in human rights, labor and land dispute cases. Among the
religious community, there were 3 targeted assassinations of clergy and 7
church workers, all involved in advocacy work with the poor, peasants,
workers and national minorities.
This listing of
killings in 2005 doesn't included attempted assassinations, illegal
detention and torture and unreported disappearances. The victims were
killed by death squads controlled by the military with the aim of
protecting the power of the large landowners and land grabbers, timber and
mining barons and company bosses with the connivance of the regime.
Another important
group of victims, which overlaps with peasants and workers associations,
are the 83 leaders and members of the popular left political party, Bayan
Muna (The People First) and its 'party list' affiliates. Most were
systematically murdered in the provinces outside of Metro Manila between
2001-2005 (67 in 2005 alone). Leaders and coordinators of allied
party-list groups, such as the women's party Gabriela and the urban poor
people's party, Anakpawis (Toiling Masses), have been murdered,
disappeared or wounded. Elected officials from Bayan Muna, such a Tarlac
City councilman, Abelardo Ladera , were shot in broad daylight, prompting
defiant provincial funeral marches. His killing followed the notorious
2004 massacre of hacienda union workers in Tarlac and the subsequent
systematic elimination of witnesses.
A breakdown of the 66
death squad killings of members and supporters of the progressive
political parties in 2005 include 33 from militant urban poor peoples
party Anakpawis and 30 from Bayan Muna. Five members of Anakpawis and 3
from Bayan Muna have 'disappeared' and are presumed dead in 2005. So far
three Bayan Muna officials have been assassinated in the first 10 weeks of
2006.
Since 2003, the
Philippines became the second most dangerous country for journalists after
Iraq
because of the staggering number of reporters killed and disappeared by
death squads. Most recently a radio reporter involved in exposing abuses
at a local mine was kidnapped by death squads working for the mine owners
in late February 2006 and is presumed dead.
State-sponsored
terror today is reminiscent of the worst days of martial law under the
dictator Ferdinand Marcos (1972-1986). As under Marcos the entire
countryside is virtually under military control sharply limiting the role
of civilian administrators. A manual published by the Macapagal regime,
entitled "Knowing the Enemy" is used by the Armed Forces throughout the
country to label legal mass organizations and civil rights groups, like
the Philippine Association of Protestant Lawyers, as supporters of
'terrorism'.
The combined
military-death squad campaign has all the earmarks of US-sponsored 'low
intensity' warfare against the civilian population. The military
"proscribes" or labels individuals and groups as terrorists on the basis
of what it claims to be 'secret intelligence' in order to criminalize
their right to resist oppression and fight for self-determination and
justify their elimination. The creation of these 'lists' is outside of the
process of judicial scrutiny and limits any legal protection for the
victims or their survivors. Using the black propaganda of a psychological
warfare operation, the victims and their associations are invariably
described as 'terrorists'.
A de-facto
civilian-military alliance has been ruling the Philippines, since with the
declaration of Martial Law by Marcos in 1972. In the 1960's most
economists considered the Philippines to be the most economically
progressive nation in South East Asia. With the advent of the
liberalization of the economy, it has become one of the poorest and most
socially polarized country in Asia, with a per capita GDP of $950/year,
about half of Thailand's. With over 50 per cent of total private assets
controlled by 15 extended super-rich families it is one of most unequal
societies in the world. In stark contrast to the rest of Asia, there has
been no economic progress in the past two decades. The Philippines, with a
population of over 85 million, has one of the highest unemployment rates
(20 per cent) and an additional 30 per cent underemployed in the informal
sector. Over 40 per cent of the households are unable secure adequate
shelter and food; they are the indigent poor. The once highly regarded
public educational and health systems have sharply deteriorated due to big
government cuts in social spending and privatization. The nation, whose
research institutions produced the high yield 'miracle rice', is now a net
importer of rice and other food staples. Malnutrition is widespread,
according to the World Health Organization. Upwards of eight million
Filipinos, unable to find decent work at home, are working abroad to
support their families 'Better to die working in Iraq, than to stay home
and watch your family starve' was the pitiful, but common slogan of
Filipino workers clamoring for exit visas to perform menial work for the
US occupation army in Iraq. As many as 4,000 Filipino workers are believed
to be in Iraq.
In the years
following the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship (Feb. 26, 1986) by a
military and Church-backed revolt, the subsequent elected presidents have
failed to stem the ongoing deterioration of the country. The new rulers
like Corazon Aquino (1986-1992), and former General Fidel Ramos
(1992-1998), simply favored a new set of oligarchs and set the stage for
the rise to power of a corrupt populist, Joseph Estrada. His
"anti-oligarch" rhetoric brought him to the presidential palace in 1998
with widespread support among the poor. Estrada became an irritant to
Washington and the traditional oligarchy by welcoming Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez in 1999 and for his populist social policies, such as handing
out thousands of land titles to urban squatters.
US-designed, upper
class-backed, street demonstrations supported by sectors of the military
elite culminated in the ouster of Estrada in January 2001. The same forces
hoisted his Vice President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to the Presidency.
Macapagal is a US educated, neo-liberal economist and favorite of the US
Embassy.
This political putsch
led to the expansion of US military basing rights and a new military
agreement, quickly signed by Macapagal after a two year delay during
Estrada's presidency. With the rise of Macapagal-Arroyo, Washington has a
reliable client.
From Populism to
Neo-Liberal Terror
The newly 'installed'
Macapagal Arroyo quickly instituted a neo-liberal program of
privatizations, drastic cuts for public education and public hospitals and
onerous value-added taxes which impacted the poor and lower middle-class.
By 2005, the Philippine total external and internal debt ballooned to over
$100 billion dollars and yearly debt servicing exceed 30 per cent of the
budget. Even 8 million overseas Filipino workers (including a significant
section of the educated professionals) sending home $12.5 billion dollars
of remittances in 2005 could not begin to cover debt servicing. The
Philippines bears the dubious distinction of being the only country in
Asia to have seen a drop in per capita GDP during and since the heady
years of the 'Asian Tiger' boom.
Macapagal Arroyo's
family and cronies have been implicated in the same levels of corruption
as that attributed to the deposed President Estrada. Mike Arroyo, the
President's husband, remains in self-imposed exile in the US to avoid
facing charges of graft and fraud. Macapagal Arroyo maintains her support
among the military by offering lucrative concessions to favorite generals
and key officials in the military leading to deep discontent among the
junior ranks of the armed forces forced to survive on low wages. As a
result, several mutinies of junior officers and soldiers occurred, the
largest of which was the takeover of an upscale Manila shopping and
apartment complex in July 2003 by 300 soldiers from the special forces and
the more recent uprising of Marines in January of this year.
Military intelligence has been implicated in a campaign of bombings both
in Manila and on the southern island
of Mindanao, targeting markets,
buses, commuter trains, airports and mosques. The Macapagal regime blamed
a Moslem kidnapping gang, Abu Sayaf, and used the bombings as a
justification for greater militarization of the country. The curious
timing of the bombings, for example the December 2004 bombing of a Manila
shopping center, which killed 15, happened very soon after a devastating
landslide burying almost 1,000 townspeople in a province near Manila,
exposed the regime's incompetence in civil assistance.
Local journalist with
sources in the military believe the campaign of bombings have been carried
out by the regime itself to justify requests for more military 'aid' from
the US.
The US Connection
In December, 2002 the
US announced a significant expansion of its joint US-Philippine military
training exercises. The first contingent of US troops landing on the
southern island of
Mindanao engaged in field operations
against the Muslim separatists. In early 2003 then-Assistant US Secretary
of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz called the Philippines the 'Second Front in the
War on Terror'. Since then tens of thousands of Muslim villagers have been
forcibly displaced and hundreds have been tortured, killed or disappeared.
As a result Muslim guerrilla activity has increased.
In October 2003,
during a visit to the Philippines, Bush cited the Philippines as a model
for the re-building of Iraq. Passing, needless to say, over the US
invasion of the Philippines in 1898 and the 13-year pacification campaign
when upwards of 1 million Filipinos died, Bush described the Philippines
as a "model of democracy" °© a bonafide death squad democracy.
The Bush
Administration's support for the Macapagal Arroyo regime has been
reciprocated:. Over the protests of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, a
contingent of Philippine troops was sent to Iraq. These troops were only
withdrawn when Iraqi resistance fighters threatened to execute captured
Filipino laborers in Iraq: the Philippine economy is more dependent on
remittances from its workers in the
Middle East
than on US aid. The lucrative reconstruction contracts, which the
Philippine elite had expected to be awarded for its services to the Bush
Administration in Iraq,
never materialized. During 2006, another contingent 5,500 US soldiers are
scheduled to arrive in Mindanao and
the number of joint exercises has doubled.
US troops are not
confined to the separatist stronghold in the far south of the country.
More and more "joint operations" occur in the central islands and Luzon
where the communist New Peoples Army has been conducting a campaign
against the government for 40 years over issues of land reform and
oligarchic-imperialist control of the economy. With an estimated 10,000
fighters, the NPA is clearly viewed as a threat to US and local ruling
class interests.
Urban Popular
Protest and Emergency Decrees
In 2004, Macapagal
Arroyo narrowly defeated her rival in the Presidential elections in a
campaign marked by violence and fraud. An audiotape released in the spring
of 2005 recorded the President discussing with a top election official the
rigging of the election. Amid resignations of members of her cabinet and
calls for her resignation from the general public, she narrowly escaped a
vote of impeachment in November 2005.
Macapagal Arroyo's
disastrous neo-liberal economic policies, the growing social and economic
deterioration of the country, frantic attempts by the professionals to
escape through immigration, moves by restive middle level officers and
demonstrations by popular mass social movements put the Philippines back
in the international news. In early February 2006, an even more
devastating landslide brought on by rains and de-forestation, buried
almost 2,000 townspeople on the island
of Leyte. The inability of the
regime to provide even the most basic aid to the victims angered the
entire nation.
On February 23, 2006,
the eve of the 20th anniversary of the overthrow of the Marcos
dictatorship, Macapagal Arroyo declared a state of emergency, banning all
rallies, demonstrations and closing opposition media. She issued orders
for the arrest of 59 individuals including members of the Congress,
military officers and social critics, on charges of rebellion against her
regime. Rallies were planned to commemorate the end of the Marcos
dictatorship and to protest the electoral fraud, corruption, economic
mismanagement and human rights violations of the Macapagal Arroyo regime.
Some rallies defied the President's decree, went ahead and were violently
repressed.
Those charged with
rebellion included six Congress people from leftwing political parties, a
human rights attorney, retired and active military officers and social
activists. Most of the charges have no substance and are totally
arbitrary. For example, Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) Congressman Crispin
Beltran, age 73, veteran labor leader and anti-Marcos activist, was
arrested shortly after the Emergency Rule declaration, at first on the
basis of a 25-year-old charge made during the Marcos dictatorship. When
these charges were shown to have been dropped decades earlier, he was
charged with rebellion.
This is the latest of
a series of attacks on the part of the Macapagal Arroyo regime aimed
specifically at destroying class-based political parties and trade union
activity, including Bayan Muna and its coalition partners. The campaign of
assassination and disappearances of 80 members of this party alliance
between 2001-2005, including mayors and provincial elected representatives
has finally reached the top elected representatives in the Philippine
Congress. In 2006, repression turned from the countryside to the capital,
from peasant leaders to Manila-based Congress people, media, working class
and left party leaders. Of the 26 political assassinations in the first 10
weeks of 2006, 3 have been Bayan Muna officials.
The arbitrary arrest
of Congressional representatives sends a signal to the legal left that the
regime will not tolerate dissent or challenges to its policies even from
within Congress.
Who Are the
Perpetrators?
According to the
KARAPATAN, the independent human rights organization involved in
documenting and providing legal support to victims of human rights abuses,
the disappearances and assassinations are committed by death squads in
some of the most heavily militarized areas in the Philippines. The death
squads would not be able to act with impunity without the complicity of
the military. Witnesses to the killings have themselves disappeared and
the Philippine judicial system has failed to prosecute the intellectual
authors or perpetrators. Nor has the military made any effort to
investigate and arrest identified death squad leaders. Human rights groups
provide evidence that death squads operate under the protective umbrella
of regional military commands, especially the US-trained Special Forces.
Macapagal's promotion of the notorious Colonel Jovito Palparan, ('Butcher
of Mindoro') to General, despite extensive documentation and testimony of
gross human rights abuses points to the President's support for
military-backed state terrorism. When Palparan was assigned to Central
Luzon in September 2005, the number of political assassinations in that
region alone jumped to 52 in four months. Prior to his promotion, the
regions with the largest number of summary executions like Eastern Visayas
and Central Luzon were under then-Colonel Palparan.
State of the
Resistance
In the face of the
disintegration of the economy and society, and the regime's use of force
to sustain its hold on power, plus its gross incompetence in the face of
several ecological disasters, popular resistance has spread from the
countryside to the cities. The popular mass organizations, involving
peasant and indigenous minority farmers, industrial workers, teachers,
journalists, civil servants, students, women, artists, human rights
workers, lawyers and clergy have grown despite the campaign of state
terror. On the 20th Anniversary of the 1986 overthrow of Marcos, tens of
thousands defied the State of Emergency and marched in Manila and in
cities throughout the country. Over 10,000 women defied police bans to
march on International Women's Day. Students and teachers are mounting
campaigns on the campuses around the country. Former Presidents, business
executives and clergy are calling for Macapagal Arroyo's resignation and a
'smooth transition' within the elite, while the popular mass movements and
their besieged political representatives are demanding justice for the
victims of state terror, an end to US military presence, a repeal of the
value added taxes, an increase in the minimum wage, land reform, a
moratorium of debt payments, re-nationalization of key economic sectors
and consequential peace negotiations between the state and the NPA and
Muslim separatists. That Macapagal Arroyo will eventually be forced to
resign is, according to officials, a likely outcome. The question is when
and by whom?
17 March 2006
James Petras, a
former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a
50 year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless
and jobless in brazil and argentina and is co-author of
Globalization Unmasked (Zed). His new book with Henry Veltmeyer,
Social Movements and the State: Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina,
will be published in October 2005. He can be reached at:
jpetras@binghamton.edu
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