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By Jonathan Hicap and Inday
Espina-Varona
Extrajudicial killings in the
country will not stop unless Malacañang and the Armed Forces
acknowledge the reality of rights violations and reevaluate their
counterinsurgency strategy, the UN special rapporteur warned on
Wednesday.
Philip Alston, the independent UN
investigator, ended his 10-day mission with harsh words for the
military, likening the institution to an alcoholic in a state of
denial.
Alston, at a press briefing, said
there is no evidence directly linking President Arroyo to the
killings. He also praised Mrs. Arroyo for taking some steps to
resolve the issue of killings.
But he slammed a culture of
impunity stemming from the “rampant problem of witness
vulnerability.”
Alston urged Mrs. Arroyo to order
a halt to the murder of militants and show proof that these will not
be tolerated.
He asked Malacañang to
immediately release the Melo report, saying there was no
justification for keeping it secret.
He also called on the AFP to be
serious and methodical with investigations instead of using these to
protect institutions and individuals charged with the killings.
“When the Chief of the AFP
contends himself with telephoning Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan three
times in order to satisfy himself that the persistent and extensive
allegations against the general were entirely unfounded, rather than
launching a thorough internal investigation, it is clear that there
is still a very long way to go,” Alston said.
A significant number of the
killings have been “convincingly attributed” to the military,
Alston stressed.
“The President needs to
persuade the military that its reputation and effectiveness will be
considerably enhanced, rather than undermined, by acknowledging the
facts and taking genuine steps to investigate,” he noted.
Impunity
The UN special rapporteur quoted
experts estimating that eight of ten cases of killings do not make
it to the trial stage, because witnesses are “systematically
intimidated and harassed.”
Addressing the government’s
complaint about uncooperative witnesses, Alston said: “The present
message is that if you want to preserve your life expectancy,
don’t act as a witness in a criminal prosecution for killing.”
“In a relatively poor society,
in which there is heavy dependence on community and very limited
real geographical mobility, witnesses are uniquely vulnerable when
the forces accused of killings are all too often those, or are
linked to those, who are charged with ensuring their security,”
Alston said.
He called the government’s
Witness Protection Program (WPP) “impressive—on paper,” saying
its practice is deeply flawed and effective only in a very limited
number of cases. Later on, other people closely involved with the
investigation said the successful WPP cases mostly comprised media
slay witnesses.
Not just propaganda
Alston rejected the AFP’s
efforts to label reports of hundreds of political murders as mere
leftist propaganda.
While he refused to be dragged
into “the numbers game,” calling it unproductive, Alston said,
“the number is high enough to be distressing.”
Meeting separately with civil
society groups, Alston noted the “corrosive” effects of
extrajudicial killings.
“You kill a few hundreds and
you intimidate hundreds of thousands,” he pointed out.
He said the problem “sends a
message of vulnerability to all but the most well-connected,” and
“severely undermines the political discourse which is central to a
resolution of the problems confronting the country.”
The independent investigator
praised the high quality of documentation provided by human-rights
groups.
“Much importance was attached
to two persons who had been listed as killed, but who were presented
to me alive,” Alston pointed out, referring to a case often used
to discredit the rights group Karapatan.
“Two errors, in circumstances
which might partly explain the mistakes, do very little to discredit
the vast number of remaining allegations,” he stressed.
No purge, either
The UN investigator also branded
as “fabrication” and “disinformation” the military’s other
claim, which attributes the killings to a New People’s Army purge.
“This theory was relentlessly
pushed by the AFP and many of my government interlocutors,” he
said.
“But we must distinguish the
number of 1,227 cited by the military from the limited number of
cases in which the CPP/NPA have acknowledged, indeed boasted, of
killings. While such cases have certainly occurred, even those most
concerned about them, such as members of Akbayan, have suggested to
me that they could not amount to even 10 percent of the total
killings.”
He said the AFP continues to
present figures and trends relating to the purges of the late 1980s
and on an alleged communist document captured in May 2006,
describing “Operation Bushfire.”
“In the absence of much
stronger supporting evidence this particular document bears all the
hallmarks of fabrication and cannot be taken as evidence of anything
other than disinformation.”
Melo report
While praising President Arroyo
for taking some steps to resolve the serious problem of rights
violations, Alston said a lot remains to be done.
One of the first things the
government must do, he said, is to release the Melo Commission
report.
Alston, who also met with members
of the special body, refused to discuss the contents of the report
but said the government’s reasons for withholding it are
“unconvincing.”
“The report was never intended
to be preliminary or interim,” he pointed out.
“The need to get ‘leftists’
to testify is no reason with withhold a report which in some ways at
least vindicates their claims,” Alson said. “And extending a
Commission whose composition has never succeeded in winning full
cooperation seems unlikely to cure the problems still perceived by
these groups.”
Alston described different
responses at different levels of government.
“There has been a welcome
acknowledgment of the seriousness of the problem at the very top,”
he said. “At the executive level, the messages have been very
mixed and often unsatisfactory. At the operational level, the
allegations have too often been met with a response of incredulity,
mixed with offense.”
During his stay, Alston met with
President Arroyo, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, National
Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, and Secretaries Raul Gonzales of
Justice, Ronaldo Puno of Interior and Local Government and Jesus
Dureza of the Peace Process.
He also met with members of Task
Force Usig, Melo Commission, Moro National Liberation Front, Moro
Islamic Liberation Front, and more than 200 witnesses in Davao,
Manila and Baguio.
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