[News] Is Canadian Military Aid Funding Assassinations in the Philippines?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=44&ItemID=14456

Is Canadian Military Aid Funding Assassinations in the Philippines?
by Stefan Christoff; December 06, 2007

  A history of popular rebellions is woven into 
politics in the Philippines, from the 1986 
"People Power Revolution" of street protests that 
overthrew the US supported dictator, Ferdinand 
Marcos, to the ongoing left-wing guerrilla 
insurgency of the New People's Army (NPA).

Economic inequality is a central element fueling 
political turmoil and grassroots rebellions in 
the country. According to the United Nations, an 
estimated 45 million people in the Philippines 
live on less than two US dollars per day.

Instability in the Philippines extends beyond the 
current economic crisis, as a growing 
international controversy surrounds the 
administration of President Gloria 
Macapagal-Arroyo. Political killings in the 
country are on the rise; the Philippines is 
estimated by Amnesty International to have one of 
the highest rates of politically-motivated murders in the world.

In 2006, Amnesty concluded that "over recent 
years reports of an increased number of killings 
of political activists, predominately those 
associated with leftist or left-orientated 
groups, have caused increasing concern in the 
Philippines and internationally."

Today, political organizers implicated in 
movements for social change in the Philippines are under the gun.

In Manila, human rights advocates point to aid 
from the governments of Canada and the US as 
supporting the governmental-backed targeting and killing of local activists.

It is commonly estimated that over 860 people 
have been killed in acts of politically motivated 
violence in the Philippines since the beginning 
of Arroyo's term in 2001, which many local human 
rights activists attribute partially to a US 
backed "counterinsurgency" program of the Armed 
Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Union leaders, 
religious figures, progressive politicians and 
community organizers have all been targeted in 
killings that leave a bloody trail pointing to 
the highest levels of political power in the nation.

"Despite major international pressure, Arroyo's 
government has not halted the ongoing political 
killings," explains Benjie Oliveros the managing 
editor of Bulatlat, a popular alternative online 
news publication based in Quezon City.

"The Armed Forces of the Philippines denies that 
they are involved in the killings, although 
everyone understands implicitly that the military 
is directly involved," Oliveros told the Dominion 
over tea in Manila, "we believe that 
international media has a responsibility to 
amplify the untold violence that progressive 
movements are facing in our country today."

In 2007 Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur of 
the United Nations Human Rights Council, accused 
the current government of "encouraging or 
facilitating the killings" through the AFP. 
According to Alston, President Arroyo and the 
national military were not only in a "state of 
denial" about the political killings, but 
"complicit" in the systematic executions of those 
labeled "enemies of the state."

"In some areas, the leaders of leftist 
organizations are systematically hunted down by 
interrogating and torturing those who may know 
their whereabouts," outlines a additional United 
Nations report released in August 2007, "they are 
often killed following a campaign of individual 
vilification designed to instill fear into the community."

"I cannot agree on that," Lieutenant-General of 
the state military, Alexander Yano, told Reuters 
news agency in a recent interview, in 
contradiction to the recently published UN 
report, explaining "that there could be some 
rogue elements in the military", but it was "not 
state policy to allow extra-judicial killings and disappearances."

Until today the Armed Forces of the Philippines 
and left-wing guerrillas of the 10,000-strong New 
Peoples Army (NPA), remain locked in a 
decades-old battle for political control 
throughout the Pacific archipelago. Commonly 
viewed as one of the longest running guerrilla 
wars in the world, the battle between state 
military forces and the NPA dates back to the 
1960s, when communist-driven national liberation 
movements spread throughout Asia.

Since 9/11, the ongoing struggle between state 
forces and the leftist guerrilla movement in the 
Philippines has been swept into the international 
"War on Terror," as both the NPA guerrilla 
movement and also the National Democratic Front 
of the Philippines (NDFP), an umbrella 
organization representing left movements in the 
country, have been designated as "terrorist" 
organizations domestically and internationally by 
western governments, including the US and Canada.

Today, the Canadian government delivers 
approximately $20 million on an annual basis in 
overseas development aid to the Arroyo government 
in Manila, mainly through the Canadian 
International Development Agency (CIDA). 
Officially, the outlined objectives of CIDA’s 
development strategy in the Philippines is to 
"foster efficient, responsive, transparent and 
accountable governance at all levels."

Canada's international development agency 
describes the Philippines as a "functioning 
democracy with a vibrant civil society," despite 
the rise in political killings in the country.

In addition to Canadian "development aid," 
Canada's Military Training Program (MTAP) has 
provided army personnel from the Philippines with 
training in Canada on "peace support operations, 
staff training and language" since 1997.

According to the Department of National Defense, 
military personnel from the Philippines 
participate in training activities in Canada on 
an annual basis, despite official Canadian policy 
guidelines barring the government from offering 
military support "to countries that are involved 
in armed conflict or whose governments have a 
persistent record of human rights violations."

As Canadian military aid to the Arroyo government 
continues to flow, the southern Philippines has 
been labeled a "new front" to the US-driven 'War 
on Terror' opened shortly after 9/11, in an 
effort to legitimate the heightened targeting of 
armed movements rooted in the minority Muslim 
community by both the Philippine military and US 
forces stationed in the country, according to human rights advocates.

In 2002 the Bush Administration launched 
Operation Enduring Freedom – Philippines, in 
which thousands of US soldiers and military 
personnel were deployed, including more than 1200 
members of the United States Special Operations 
Command, Pacific. Armed Muslim movements such as 
the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the 
shady Abu Sayyaf group are facing an overt 
military campaign from government and US troops 
in this new battleground of the War on Terror."

A 2007 feature article in USA Today claimed that 
in the Philippines, the "US is making progress in 
war on terror; US special forces have helped 
kill, capture or rout hundreds of Abu Sayyaf 
guerrillas." According to one US Army Major 
operating in the Philippines, "they've been 
kicking some butt... I think they're close to breaking this thing open."

Hundreds of Filipinos civilians are missing or 
have been killed in the military violence. Those 
affected by the military campaigns are 
overwhelming the Philippines' impoverished majority.

Muslims in the Philippines are estimated to 
comprise five per cent of the national 
population, known locally as Moros -- the term 
dates to Spanish colonial forces which ruled the 
islands from 1565 to 1898 -- and widely regarded 
as playing a central role in the struggles 
against both Spanish and US colonization. In 
recent years, grassroots political parties 
representing minority Muslim communities in the 
Philippines such as Suara Bangsamoro -- "Voice of 
the Moro People" -- have built alliances with 
left movements running in national elections.

100 years ago, US forces battled Moro fighters in 
the southern Philippines, during the 
Philippine-American War, in which an estimated 
one-tenth of the Filipino population lost their 
lives. Violent US military campaigns in 
Philippines during the early 20th century are a 
haunting historical reference point for the 
current US military role in the southern islands; 
until today, US forces have never been able to 
permanently subdue the Moro population.

US writer Mark Twain authored a disturbing 
account of US military action in the early 20th 
century. "We have pacified some thousands of the 
islanders and buried them," Twain wrote, 
"destroyed their fields; burned their villages, 
and turned their widows and children 
out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to 
some dozens of disagreeable patriots."

Silencing "disagreeable patriots" in the 
Philippines remains a seemingly impossible task 
today, as modern weaponry and US troop 
deployments to the Philippines as part of the 
"War on Terror" manifest echoes of the history of 
US colonialism in the country.

"People in the Philippines today are facing a 
deathtrap, as the international economic system 
creates a massive monetary outflow from the 
country, with over 70 per cent of our annual 
budget going to payments on our national debt, as 
administered by international creditors including 
the World Bank," explains Teddy Casino, sitting 
congressman for the progressive political party Bayan Muna.

"This economic system squeezing the people of the 
Philippines is a new colonialism, enforced by the 
Arroyo government through military force," 
continues Teddy Casino, "a government that is 
waging a war with US support against the 
progressive movements in this country with armed violence and repression."

A battle of ideas is apparent everywhere you 
visit in the Philippines, a battle that pits 
western-backed economic and military policies 
endorsed by the government of Gloria 
Macapagal-Arroyo against grassroots progressive 
movements in the country, which according to all 
indicators are on the rise throughout the nation.





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