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By Anthony Vargas, Reporter
DEFENSE officials on Wednesday
still remain slighted by UN special rapporteur Philip Alston’s
report that all but dimmed the country’s human-rights credibility
before the international community.
Defense Secretary Hermo-genes
Ebdane Jr., said that Alston’s report in putting the blame on the
“military” for so-called extrajudicial killings might have
affected the country’s profile among foreigners.
“The international outlook has
changed . . . now, a person is declared guilty until proven
otherwise,” Ebdane told reporters during a chance interview in
Camp Aguinaldo.
Ebdane said Alston have turned
deaf, blind, and mute and has declared the military “guilty until
proven otherwise” over the spate of extrajudicial killings in the
country.
Ebdane covered his eyes, mouth
and ears, while poking fun on Alston with the lyrics from a popular
Tagalong folksong in the 80’s “Bulag, Pipi, at Bingi” by
Freddie Aguilar.
“Alston won’t pay attention.
He is blind, mute and deaf. We can’t do anything about that,”
Ebdane said, referring to reports that some of the victims of
extrajudicial killings have turned out to be alive.
Another defense official said
that the military was vindicated after the Commission on Human
Rights (CHR) cleared retired Army general, Jovito Palparan, from the
killings.
“We never doubted General
Palparan. Had he not retired, he would still be serving now in the
same area,” said by the department’s spokesman, Defense
Undersecretary Ernesto Carolina.
The military’s public
information chief, Lt. Col. Bartolome Bacarro, said that allegations
against Palparan were mere “machinations of some interest
groups.”
Palparan, who retired from the
service in September 2006, has been dubbed by his enemies as “The
Butcher” and accused as being behind the killings and
disappearances in his areas of assignments.
Palparan has denied several times
the allegations against him, saying that these were just propaganda
work of his enemies whom he accused of infiltrating the
Palace-formed Melo Commission.
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