|
Philip Alston logged 14-hour days during a 10-day
mission to investigate extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, a
task he described as “harrowing” and “exhausting.”
At the end of his visit, Alston
said the Filipinos should take pride in a Constitution that strongly
protect civil liberties and in laws that have opened up democratic
space.
Alston, however, slammed the
national leadership for eroding these gains.
“The executive branch, openly
and enthusiastically aided by the military, has worked resolutely to
circumvent the spirit of these legislative decisions,” he said.
The UN prober said the plan to
impede the work of party-list groups and put into question their
right to operate freely was “nonviolent in conception.”
“But there are cases in which
it has, certainly at the local level, spilled over into decisions to
extrajudicially execute those who cannot be reached by legal
process,” Alston pointed out.
Tense meetings
The veteran rights investigator
met with 200 witnesses to 103 cases in meetings that were tightly
guarded, as much as could be in a visit coordinated by the office of
the national security adviser and within protocol that dictated
police escorts for Alston.
The UN prober acknowledged the
effort was as tasking to human-rights groups as it was for his team.
Many of the witnesses, a nun from the Task Force Detainees of the
Philippines said, begged for escorts from the religious sector and
often went into the meeting venues in tears.
“You don’t know what it took
to get these people out [of hiding],” the nun said.
Alston, a hardened investigator,
had to struggle to keep tears at bay at some of the interviews.
“I talked with a woman whose
husband was killed in an alleged encounter,” he shared at a press
briefing. “They were in the house, sleeping. There were no signs
of weapons. Their children were behind them. They put 47 bullets
into him.”
In another case, of a youth
tortured and then killed, Alston stopped the victim’s mother from
showing pictures.
“It was rude, but I would have
collapsed,” he said.
Drained
While Alston had harsh words for
the Armed Forces, which he described as in a state of denial, he
linked extrajudicial killings to government policies that have
drastically whittled down democratic gains that followed the ouster
of a two-decade dictatorship.
Alston praised President Arroyo
for “unqualified cooperation” and said her government’s
invitation “reflects a clear recognition of the gravity of the
problem, a willingness to permit outside scrutiny and a very welcome
preparedness to engage on the issue.”
That did not stop him from taking
Arroyo’s administration to task.
Alston refused to focus on cases
alone as the Task Force Usig and the Melo Commission did.
He called the killings “a
symptom of a much more extensive problem.”
“The enduring and much larger
challenge is to restore the various accountability mechanisms that
the Philippines Constitution and Congress have put in place over the
years, too many of which have been systematically drained of their
force in recent years,” Alston stressed.
The UN prober criticized
President Arroyo for signing Executive Order 464 and its
replacement, Memorandum Circular 108, which ban senior executive
department officials from appearing before legislative probe bodies.
The Palace orders, Alston said,
“undermines significantly the capacity of Congress to hold the
executive to account in any meaningful way.”
Challenges
The UN prober said he appreciates
challenges faced by a government managing a counterinsurgency
operation on various fronts. The Communist Party of the Philippines
is Asia’s longest-running leftist insurgency.
“I do not in any way
underestimate the resulting challenges facing the government and the
AFP,” Alston said.
But he bewailed the “definitive
abandonment of President Ramos’s strategy of reconciliation.”
The Ramos effort, which he
likened to that of Northern Ireland’s engagement with Sinn Fein,
involved the creation of an opening for militants to enter the
democratic political system.
Alston said he did not doubt that
some of local activist groups remain very sympathetic to the armed
struggle of the New People’s Army.
He said there could be no
overnight transformation.
“The goal is to provide an
incentive for such groups to enter mainstream politics and to see
that path as their best option,” Alston pointed out.
The UN investigator said Congress
has not reversed democratic gains like the party-list system nor has
it repealed the antisubversion act. But Alston said the executive
branch had subverted the spirit of these legislative breakthroughs.
“The increase in extrajudicial
executions in recent years is attributable, at least in part, to a
shift in counterinsurgency strategy that occurred in some areas,
reflecting the considerable regional variations in strategies
employed,” Alston pointed out.
“In some areas, an appeal to
hearts and minds is combined with an attempt to vilify left-leaning
organizations and to intimidate leaders of such organizations. In
some instances, such intimidation escalates into extrajudicial
execution.”
Advice for civil society
At a private meeting with civil
society groups—many just learning to work together again following
a period of ideological strife—Alston also offered some blunt
advice: Be more cooperative.
He acknowledged it would be hard
for witnesses to put their lives in the hands of the same forces
accused of killing kin and comrades.
But Alston told activists:
“Civil society needs to try to develop strategies that engages at
least some level of the system.”
“No government is 100 percent
bad,” he told militants. “It’s important not to lose those
opportunities.”
Alston also warned against a
stubborn policy of withdrawal from engagement.
“At a certain point, you will
lose credibility,” he admonished rights groups.
The organizations took his
criticism in stride. But they also reminded Alston of the horrendous
outcomes in their fledgling efforts “to engage.”
Even moderate groups complained
that no amount of cooperation could get the government to take their
plaints seriously.
--Inday Espina-Varona
|
