[News] Philippines: The Killing Fields of Asia

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 From the Women’s Anti-Imperialist League
<mailto:wailcentral at yahoo.com>wailcentral at yahoo.com


PHILIPPINES: THE KILLING FIELDS OF ASIA


James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya

March 2006


Introduction


             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 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 2 ½ 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 2nd 
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’.
Background
             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 and remains the 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% 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%) and an 
additional 30% underemployed in the informal 
sector. Over 40% 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 massive 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% 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 regimes 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 
Muslem 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.  Forgetting to 
mention the US invasion of the Philippines in 
1898 and 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:  A 
contingent of Philippine troops was sent to Iraq 
over the protests of hundreds of thousands of 
Filipinos.  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 
marred 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 6 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 the disintegration of 
the economy and society, and the regime’s use of 
force to sustain its hold on power, faced with 
its gross incompetence in the face of several 
natural/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?    ---  ###



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