|
NEW Armed Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Alexander Yano was reported
in a front page banner story by The Philippine Star to be quite a
human rights advocate. Great news like that, written by Reiner Padua,
should stir us to take action. Write a letter, talk to someone about
the hope that something good could be happening for a change on the
human-rights front of our uniformed and armed services.
We should thank Gen. Yano for warning the men
under him that he “will surrender those personnel who will become
suspects [in any case of human rights abuse] . . . ” and that he
“will not hesitate to surrender them [himself to the authorities]
to really make sure those involved will have to answer [for
their wrongdoings].”
He “emphasized his respect for human rights
and vowed to implement measures against . . . military personnel”
who commit human rights abuse. And “he said field commanders are
under strict orders to implement the national policy against human
rights violations.”
He told the commanders that, based on the
principle of command responsibility, they would face the
consequences of their men’s HR violations.
We should encourage Gen. Yano to be true to his
word. And we should tell him that Filipinos who are still concerned
about morality both in public service and in our dealings with each
other, about human virtues and the code of honor that is supposed to
govern officers and gentlemen of the military—and the police—are
solidly behind him.
Reiner also reported Gen. Yano to have said that
it is improbable for the communist New People’s Army to be
completely eradicated as long as human rights violations are always
being linked to the military’s counter-insurgency strategy.
His words show that Gen. Yano’s heart is in
the right place. Now we should pray that his actions really conform
to the call of his spirit.
My fantasy
Some will immediately pooh-pooh Gen. Yano’s
declarations of his personal zeal for human rights as PR work. We
should not be so cynical.
The Left will of course bristle at his frankness
about the continued stay of military civil-action teams in some 29
or so depressed communities in Metro Manila. He said the dental,
medical and educational services of these teams of largely unarmed
Agence France-Presse personnel are part of the military’s
operations to win the hearts and minds of the people. These
communities are where—Agence France-Presse intelligence must have
told the brass—there are communist operatives recruiting for the
CPP or the NPA, giving the rebel version of the true state of
Philippine society in get-togethers with citizens.
If the anti-government propagandists can operate
in these barangay, why can’t Agence France-Presse propaganda units
do the same?
I have a fantasy about this. If the members of
the Agence France-Presse civil action teams are made up of people of
the kind that Gen. Yano is—having his outlook on human rights and
how insurgency can be quelled—their objectives would eventually
converge with those of the Leftists.
As long as the Leftist propagandists are not
armed-struggle kinds of Reds, their work is aimed to bring about the
good of the poor people. They would share the same idea with the AFP
teams that the poor’s oppression should be ended, that the
injustice done to them be redressed, that their poverty be
alleviated.
That is what a lot of non-armed-struggle
Marxists—even Maoists—in India and nowadays Nepal have
experienced. So have a lot of Communists in Italy (remember Italy
used to have the West’s largest communist membership). They found
it good to work with pro-poor NGOs and government people, and
with sections even of the armed services, people who believe in
social justice and the Christian message of solidarity and giving
each human being the dignity due him (or her).
But there are Leftists whose final aim is to
establish nothing less than a Communist state. Their immediate
objective is to make the public despise everything the government,
the police and the military do. To these Leftists my fantasy is
unacceptable—even if they know that 90 percent of the Filipinos
have this fantasy too.
The extreme Leftists’ ultimate desire is the
downfall not just of the Arroyo administration—whose legitimacy is
seriously doubted by most Filipinos and whose actions almost always
feed suspicions of corruption. They also want the collapse of the
entire group of institutions that prop up our imperfect and
feudalistic caricature of a democratic state.
It is wrong to use extra-judicial killings and
enforced disappearances against them.
Most Filipinos reject the extreme Leftists’
dark vision. Most of us act, hope—and pray—that we, as a people,
as a society, as a republic, will reform and improve, inch by inch,
into becoming a real social and economic democracy with everyone
enjoying a dignified life.
rqb@manilatimes.net
rq_bas@yahoo.com
|
