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Two senior Philippine Roman
Catholic Bishops on Sunday joined calls for the government to
release the Melo Commission’s report on extrajudicial killings.
Bishops Oscar
Cruz and Antonio Ledesma said releasing the report was the “only
way to stop unrest on the issue.”
“There must
be findings in the Melo report that are against the administration.
Hence, it resolved to keep it secret,” Cruz told local media.
Cruz said the
fact that President Arroyo ordered copies of the report to be given
to the European Commission (EC) and to UN Special Rapporteur Philip
Alston was “enough reason for the government to open the same
report to the public.”
US cool
As the report
controversy heated up, the US Embassy remained cool on the issue.
US Embassy
spokesman Matthew Lussenhop told The Manila Times in a telephone
interview that his government is leaving the decision of whether or
not to publicize the report, to the Arroyo administration.
“I would
still leave it to the government of the Philippines as far as the
next step should be,” he said.
Lussenhop
however reiterated the US government’s concern over the continued
unresolved killings in the country and stressed the immediate need
to address these.
“We have
certainly raised the issue of unsolved killings and we have
registered our concern,” he said.
Ledesma,
vice-president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the
Philippines (CBCP), told local media that “the people,
particularly the families of the victims, are entitled to know the
results of the investigations.”
His statement
came a day after media groups slammed President Arroyo’s to
withhold the report from media, calling it “an insult to the
people’s right to know.”
Cooperation
Last year,
Mrs. Arroyo ordered retired Supreme Court justice Jose Melo to head
a special commission to investigate the killings.
The report has
not been made public, but people familiar with the findings say it
blamed certain members of the security forces, as well as communist
guerrillas, for the killings.
On Saturday,
the government said it was prepared to work closely with the United
Nations and the European Union to discover those behind a wave of
political murders.
Human rights
monitors say more than 830 mainly left-wing activists, including
students, politicians and journalists, have been murdered since Mrs.
Arroyo came to power in 2001.
President
Arroyo’s office said in a statement Saturday: “We shall continue
to work with our partners in the UN and the EU and receive their
constructive recommendations on how to proceed effectively in
resolving and stopping the incidents of ideologically-motivated
killings.”
Mrs. Arroyo
has been under intense local and international pressure to stop the
bloodshed, which her government has blamed on communist rebels
killing each other as part of an internal purge.
The UN Human
Rights Commission’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings,
Philip Alston, is currently in the country to meet with families of
the victims, as well as with Philippine justices.
The families
of several victims of extrajudicial killings were due to meet with
Alston on Sunday.
 --AFP
and Francis Cueto
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