[News] Phillipine Labor leader's murder latest in string of political killings

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://news.inq7.net/breaking/index.php?index=2&story_id=54589

Labor leader's murder latest in string of political killings
First posted 05:43pm (Mla time) Oct 26, 2005
By
Agence France-Presse

THE MURDER of a prominent labor leader is the latest in a series of high 
profile killings of left-wing activists which human rights advocates and 
legislators charge is part of a military-backed campaign.

Ricardo Ramos, head of the labor union at the centre of a bitter dispute at 
the Hacienda Luisita sugar mill owned by the family of former president 
Corazon Aquino, was shot twice by an unknown man while drinking with 
friends in his backyard in Tarlac City, north of Manila on Tuesday night.

Meanwhile Francisco Rivera, an activist with the left-wing Bayan Muna 
(Nation First) party, and two close friends were gunned down by a group of 
armed men while jogging near his home in Angeles City north of Manila early 
Wednesday morning.

In September Diosdado Fortuna, the Nestle union president and chairman of 
the regional branch of Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement), was murdered.

Fortuna had been at the center of a three-year campaign against the 
multi-national Swiss-based food company for better pay and conditions.

According to the Alliance for the Advancement of Human Rights, a 
Manila-based human rights group, there have been more than 116 political 
murders in the Philippines this year, all of them still unsolved.

"Of that number 47 were political activists and 69 civilians suspected of 
being supporters of the legal political left such as Bayan Muna or the 
illegal left ... Communist Party or its military wing the New People's 
Army," alliance spokeswoman Ruth Cervantes told Agence France-Presse.

"The alarming pattern of killings and disappearances in this country is 
part of a policy of state repression aimed at silencing government critics 
and quelling dissent. It is the sign of a paranoid government."

The deputy secretary general of Bayan Muna, Roberto de Castro, told Agence 
France-Presse: "These killings have to stop. So far this year 14 Bayan Muna 
party officials have been murdered ... 61 since President Gloria Arroyo 
came to power in 2001.

"It is clear that this is a systematic attack not only on Bayan Muna but on 
all progressive people's movements here in the Philippines by right-wing 
elements within the government and military."

Bayan Muna legislator Joel Virador was more direct, saying the recent spate 
of killings, all in the Central Luzon region, "is unmistakably the 
handiwork of Major General Jovito Palparan."

Palparan has been reassigned twice after human rights advocates, local 
officials and lawmakers accused him of grave human rights atrocities. He 
was assigned to Central Luzon in September.

He was bypassed by for promotion earlier this year after opposition from 
the leftist legislators.

Military spokesman Brigadier General Jose Honrado recently said Palparan 
"unconditionally respects human rights and abhors torture and ill treatment 
of suspects in custody."

According to a recent report in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, during his 
stint as commander of the army's 204th infantry brigade in Oriental Mindoro 
from 2001 to 2004, "Palparan was accused of 326 cases of human rights 
violations including about 80 killings."

The newspaper said similar allegations were leveled at Palparan when he was 
military commander in Samar.

 From February to May this year, human rights groups accused him of 199 
cases of killing, disappearances, harassment, torture, arbitrary arrest and 
detention of civilians and rights advocates before being transferred again, 
the paper added.

Virador said: "summary executions and other human rights violations have 
occurred in areas where Palparan has been deployed. The trend is too 
obvious to simply dismiss as coincidence."



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