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<font size=3>From the Women’s Anti-Imperialist League<br>
<a href="mailto:wailcentral@yahoo.com">wailcentral@yahoo.com</a><br>
<br>
</font><h1><b>PHILIPPINES: THE KILLING FIELDS OF
ASIA</b></h1><font size=3> <br>
James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya<br>
<br>
March 2006<br><br>
</font><h3><b>Introduction</b></h3><font size=3> <br>
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. <br>
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. <br>
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.
<br>
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. <br>
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. <br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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. <br>
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.<br>
Since 2003, the Philippines became the 2<sup>nd</sup> 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. <br>
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’. <br>
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’.<br>
<u>Background<br>
</u> 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 <i>‘Better to die working in Iraq,
than to stay home and watch your family starve</i>’ 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.<br>
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.<br>
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. <br>
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.<br><br>
</font><h2><b>From Populism to Neo-Liberal
Terror</b></h2><font size=3>
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. <br>
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.
<br>
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.<br>
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. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>The US
Connection</b></h2><font size=3>
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. <br>
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. <br>
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. <br>
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.<br><br>
</font><h3><b>Urban Popular Protest and Emergency
Decrees</b></h3><font size=3>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.<br>
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.<br>
On
February 23, 2006, the eve of the 20<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the
overthrow of the <br>
<br>
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. <br>
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.
<br>
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.<br>
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. <br>
<u>Who
are the Perpetrators?<br>
</u>
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. <br><br>
</font><h3><b>State of the
Resistance</b></h3><font size=3>
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 20<sup>th</sup>
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? --- ###<br>
<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
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