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At the close of the two-day summit conducted by the
Supreme Court, the participants adopted a workshop resolution that
the President be asked to issue an order to stop the extrajudicial
killings and enforced disappearances.
(As a counterpoint to the summit,
an Anakpawis leader in Leyte was shot dead by an unidentified gunman
riding a motorbike—typical of how victims, many belonging to
militant party-list groups, have been rubbed out.)
It was reported that the Army and
police participants in the workshop objected to the stop the killing
order proposal and also raised concerns about the proposal about
command responsibility and leaders’ liability.
As of this writing there is no
way of knowing if such an order will be issued before or during the
President’s state of the nation address on Monday. We hear though
that she may address the issue of extrajudicial killings and
enforced disappearances at the State of the Nation address. This is
her chance to go beyond rhetorical or motherhood statements.
There are other good proposals
produced by the summit including: expanding the Commission on Human
Rights’s prosecutorial powers, empowering probers to search
government/private premises for victims of enforced disappearances,
and making killings of journalists/judges/activists a new crime
separate from murder/kidnapping.
The proposals will be forwarded
to concerned government branches/agencies. Their
adoption/implementation will depend naturally on the government.
However, based on the low level of enthusiasm shown by executive
officials for these proposals, can we expect that things will not be
business as usual? Will Congress, dominated as it is by supporters
of the President, have the will to enact the appropriate laws? What
about the Senate where only three senators (Madrigal, Roxas and
Pimentel) voted against the Human Security Act (HSA) seen as an
instrument for more repression?
The Left, while welcoming the
summit in the articulation of people’s concerns about
extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, does not see
much hope for the summit proposals for as long as the present regime
maintains its policy of trying to crush the “communist
insurgency” or getting the rebels to capitulate by 2010.
This policy is untenable even
with the passage of the HSA—which has been opposed by a broad
spectrum of citizens, the media, civil society groups and Church
bodies.
The summit itself held by the
Supreme Court is already a strongly implied criticism of the HSA
when it called for an acceptable definition of terrorism. The Chief
Justice himself last April called the “war on terror” mindless
and paving the way for more human rights violations.
The way to go at this juncture is
to repeal the HSA or having it declared unconstitutional by the
Supreme Court, and set the stage for the resumption of the peace
talks.
A ceasefire agreement will have
to be reached before they tackle the last two parts of the 1992
joint Hague declaration—the agreement on social, political and
economic reform and the agreement on the disposition of forces prior
to a signing of a peace pact. Unless the GRP has already nullified
the earlier agreements on safety and immunity guarantees, and
international humanitarian law and human rights by its all out war
policy.
In peace talks with the National
Democratic Front, the independence of the GMA government from US
intervention will be tested. For the US government has long fought
the cold war even after the dissolution of the USSR and its Eastern
Europe satellites and has embarked since 9/11 under the Bush
administration on a “war on terror” that has wrought havoc and
atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan and human rights violations in
the US itself as a result of its Patriot Act.
From the start the GMA regime has
hewed closely to the US-led coalition on the war on terror—which
includes painting homegrown rebels as terrorists. We have a
US-trained and equipped armed forces, many of whose generals have
attended US service schools on counterinsurgency.
And will the US allow a client
state to come to terms with “communist terrorists”?
Hence, we cannot be too sanguine
about achieving respect for human rights much less peace during the
remainder of GMA’s term. Just hope we are wrong.
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