Extrajudicial killings and other gross human rights violations in the Philippines emerged as a public phenomenon during the administration of Ferdinand Marcos, especially during and after his imposition of martial law.22 Marcos declared martial law in 1972, lifting it in 1981.23Although he justified martial law as a necessary response to armed Communist rebels, his assumption of emergency powers was also a systemic assault against his political opponents and the press as well as the beginning of an intensified counterinsurgency campaign against various rebel groups.24 Marcos’s political opponents were murdered, disappeared, and/or tortured on a vast scale—a practice that would intensify even after martial law was officially lifted.25 Targets included farmers, students, lawyers, journalists, tribal leaders, and academics.26 The practice of ‘salvaging’ became particularly widespread. ‘Salvaging’ refers to the disappearance and summary execution of accused subversives by the military with ‘their bodies left where they will eventually be found.’27
In addition to the targeting of political opponents and the media, the Marcos years saw an intensified counterinsurgency campaign that led to numerous civilian deaths in areas where the New People’s Army operated.28 In addition to those killed by the regular military were those killed by paramilitary forces armed, supported or tolerated by the government.29 These groups engaged in brigandage against civilians and other crimes like smuggling and murder for hire, in addition to being employed to kill the government’s political opponents.30 When the government was questioned about its or its adjuncts’ killings, its standard responses included claiming that victims had died while attempting to escape from government custody, in armed encounters with the military, or had been assassinated by Communists—claims that were usually rejected.31
The rise in human rights violations during the Marcos era has been traced to a number of factors: (1) official orders from Marcos to detain suspects without warrants and in extralegal safe houses; (2) the enculturation of graduates from the Philippine Military Academy in a culture of ‘torture, corruption and impunity’; (3) Marcos’ permissiveness with respect to military commanders’ pursuit of Communists combined with competition amongst commanders for his favor; (4) and the transformation of anti-insurgency efforts into underground campaigns ‘spreading terror through arrests, salvaging and torture.’32 Despite this strategy, the Marcos years saw a large increase in the numbers of armed rebel fighters and in their popular support.33 The New People’s Army was hardly innocent of murder either, dispatching ‘Sparrow’ death squads into the cities to engage in assassinations and engaging in a ‘purge’ in the 1980s in which it executed hundreds of its own members.34 However, even then, the government was seen as responsible for the bulk of human rights violations.35
2. Extrajudicial Killings after Marcos: From Aquino to Arroyo
The fall of the Marcos regime in 1986 ended neither armed rebellions nor the political killings and enforced disappearances that had come to be associated with it. The succeeding administration of Corazon Aquino continued the practice of arming paramilitary groups, this time known as Citizen’s Armed Forces Geographical Units or CAFGUs,36 under direct military command, to which many human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, were attributed.37 Peace talks between the government and the CPP-NPA fell apart when the NPA rejected the Aquino administration’s peace overtures, including offers of amnesty and the release of Communist Party leaders, and when it continued its armed campaign against the government.38
In 1987, Aquino declared a ‘total war’ against the NPA, against which the CAFGUs were released.39 CAFGUs distributed ‘hit lists’ of intended targets of violence, warning victims that they would be killed if they did not cease political activities, and engaged in the actual murders of the victims.40 Victims of extrajudicial killings included human rights activists, lawyers, members of the Church, and others.41 Aside from the CAFGUS, elite intelligence units allegedly engaged in covert assassinations.42
Aquino’s successor, President Fidel Ramos improved the Philippines’ record on extrajudicial killings and other traditional human rights concerns.43 Nonetheless, they continued, with most cases attributable to the CAFGUs, the military, and the police.44 In particular, the Ramos administration’s Presidential Anti-Crime Commission, led by then-Vice President Joseph Estrada, became notorious for the summary executions of criminal suspects with official sanction and with impunity.45 The government did, however, reach a framework for peace negotiations with the Communist Party or National Democratic Front, decriminalized membership in the Communist Party,46 and entered into a Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (‘CARHIHRL’) with the CPP-NDF.47
However, the CPP-NDF withdrew from peace talks in 2004 as President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration was roiled by an electoral scandal that called her government’s legitimacy into question.48 The Arroyo administration, faced with military and popular discontent responded with a brief assumption of emergency powers directed against the CPP-NPA and discontented military officers.49 It then launched what it called an ‘endgame strategy’against the CPP-NPA.50 President Arroyo ordered the NPA’s defeat by the end of her second term in 2010.51 The campaign against the NPA swept broadly. Among others, the government included leftist members of Congress who had been elected to represent leftist political parties as enemies of the State.52 Outside Metro Manila, extrajudicial killings dramatically rose in number. According to one estimate, the number of cases of extrajudicial killings in the country, excluding journalists, tripled in 2005 and 2006, rising to 63 and 68 respectively from 22 in 2004.53
Special Rapporteur Philip Alston credited the rise to the government’s decision to try to end the insurgency by attacking leftist civil society organizations.54 Leftist activists and personalities, practically the sole victims of the killings,55 were found to have been listed on military and police lists called ‘orders of battle.’56 The manner of killing was generally uniform: victims would be shot by one or two assailants who would sometimes engage in the shooting while on motorcycles.57
Alston observed at least two different general typologies for such killings. In one province, the Armed Forces of the Philippines collect information about residents in particular areas to identify rebels or members of civil society organizations: those who cannot be persuaded to ‘surrender’ from their suspected affiliation then become targets for an extrajudicial execution.58 In another province, the AFP ‘systematically hunt[s]‘ down ‘leaders of leftist organizations’ using torture and interrogation to identify targets who are usually eventually killed.59
High-ranking officers, most notably then-General Jovito Palparan, Jr.,60 made public statements appearing to condone or approve of human rights violations. Palparan went on record to state, among others, that: ‘the killing of activists is necessary incident to conflict’; ‘I encourage people victimized by communist rebels to get even’; and ‘I cannot order my soldiers to kill, it’s their judgment call, they can do it on their own.’61 Palparan, a division-level commander, has been implicated as being directly involved in cases of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.62
And allegation so fat least some official military involvement in extrajudicial killings have been supported with documentation.63 Other high-level administration officials, even Cabinet members, made statements apparently supportive of the scope of the government’s counter-insurgency strategy.64 But how high actual responsibility for the planning and ordering of extrajudicial killings goes remains unknown.65
President Arroyo and her chief military commanders have never been directly implicated in killings or disappearances.
The Arroyo administration’s response to the rise of extrajudicial killings was to publicly censure the killings and to organize task forces and commissions,66 though it saw little progress in terms of actual prosecutions and even less in terms of convictions.67 Nevertheless, the Arroyo administration did see some positive developments. Extrajudicial killings, excluding killings of journalists, declined in 2007 and after.68 The period also saw the finding of the government’s independent Melo Commission that the government was responsible for extrajudicial killings and the Supreme Court’s effort to address extrajudicial killings through the promulgation of the new writs of amparo and habeas data. In addition, the Arroyo period saw the passage of the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide, and Other Crimes Against Humanity69 and the Anti-Torture Act.70 Moreover, during the last few years of the administration, the country’s Commission on Human Rights took a more active role in investigation human rights violations.71 But the 2010 massacre in Maguindanao province of 58 people by gunmen connected to a political family allied with her administration severely damaged Arroyo’s reputation on human rights,72 as did continuing criticism from the Special Rapporteur and human rights groups concerning the effectiveness of the administration’s measures.73
credit:http://plj.upd.edu.ph/the-dispute-over-extrajudicial-killings-the-need-to-define-extrajudicial-killings-as-state-sponsored-acts/
byChristian D. Pangilinan
No comments:
Post a Comment