Leftist party-list groups defend their right to exist

IN what was described as a “crude attempt” to dispute the findings of the Melo Commission and of United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston on the extrajudicial killings, the military released a 20-year-old video tagging certain party-list groups as “legal fronts” for the communist rebel movement.

Releasing the video, party-list groups Anakpawis and Sanlakas said, “strengthens the argument that the real target” of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) are the progressive party-lists and militant organizations.

“By releasing the tape, the propaganda line being peddled by Malacañang and the AFP is that they have the right to go after the unarmed left as ‘enemies of the state’ by association,” Wilson Fortaleza, Sanlakas national president, said in a statement.

Both Alston and the Melo Commission held certain rogue elements of the armed forces responsible for the political killings. Human rights organizations claim that more than 830 left-leaning activists had been killed since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power in 2001.

The said video shows Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Ma. Sison delivering a lecture in Brussels, Belgium in 1987. In the speech, which Sison said was “an old doctored film clip,” he allegedly identified legal mass organizations likeBagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), Kilusang Mayo Uno, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, Gabriela, and the League of Filipino Students as “front organizations” of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF).

Sison said the military conflated a passage of his speech enumerating the said organizations and another passage mentioning the NDF.

“What is the point of (Armed Forces Chief Hermogenes) Esperon in making all the foregoing false claims against me? To prove that I have identified legal organizations as belonging to the NDF and to ‘justify’ the military in threatening and murdering legal activists?” Sison said.

Fortaleza said even if certain groups are found to be “ideologically sympathetic and affiliated with any ‘underground’ revolutionary movement, these party-list groups still have the “right to exist.”

“This is an internationally recognized right. The Sinn Fein, for example, which is one of the major electoral parties in Ireland today, has long been recognized as being linked with the IRA,” Fortaleza said.

The IRA or the Irish Republican Army, also known as the Provos, is a left-wing paramilitary organization that had waged an armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland for more than 30 years, for which it had been “classified as a terrorist group in the United Kingdom and many other countries.” In 2005 though, the IRA formally agreed to disarm and committed itself to use “exclusively peaceful means” in its quest for a United Ireland.

In his report, Alston called it the “Sinn Fein strategy,” or the so-called strategy of reconciliation initiated by then President Fidel Ramos, which involves “the creation of an opening — the party-list system — for leftist groups to enter the democratic political system, while at the same time acknowledging that some of those groups remain very sympathetic to the armed struggle being waged by illegal groups — the IRA in the Irish case or the New People’s Army (NPA) in the Philippines case.”

“The goal is to provide an incentive for such groups to enter mainstream politics and to see that path as their best option,” Alston said.

He said that despite the party-list system and the repeal of the Anti-Subversion Act, “the executive branch, openly and enthusiastically aided by the military, has worked resolutely to circumvent the spirit of these legislative decisions by trying to impede the work of the party-list groups and to put in question their right to operate freely.”

Alston said there are cases in which this has “spilled over into decisions to extrajudicially execute those who cannot be reached by legal process.”

In its report, the Melo Commission said that a small group in the armed forces may have the “motives for the elimination of the activists.”

“In a great majority of the cases of activist killings, the only explanation for the deaths is the fact that they were allegedly rebels, or connected with the CPP/NPA,” the fact-finding panel said.

The commission said even Esperon and retired Army Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan admitted that the AFP considers the so-called left-wing and some party-list organizations as “enemies of the State” which should be “neutralized.”

In a 2006 Newsweek interview, Palparan said that in waging the counterinsurgency, there is a need to “neutralize” not just armed rebels but “also a web of alleged front organizations that include leftist political parties, human-rights and women’s organizations, even lawyers and members of the clergy.”

The panel said Palparan also cannot categorically deny the possibility that some of his men may have been behind some of the killings.

The Melo Commission reported that in one of his statements, Palparan said: “My order to my soldiers is that, if they are certain that there are armed rebels in the house or yard, shoot them. It will just be too bad if civilians are killed in the process.”

But in a statement issued to the media, Palparan said the committee may have “misinterpreted some facts and twisted his statements.”

“It should be noted that I have never admitted to have uttered statements openly encouraging extrajudicial killings,” he said.

Palparan said the commission should instead be open to the idea that other groups may be behind the killings. He suggested the possible involvement of landowners, former rebels, vigilante groups, and the CPP-NPA to the killings.

But the Melo Commission said it would be contradictory for the military to consider the “purge” theory while at the same time say that the victims were enemies of the State.

“If the CPP-NPA, the avowed enemy of the State, were indeed minded to purge the victims from its ranks, then it would have been in the interest of the military to bring the victims, being possible defectors or informants, to the government’s fold,” it said.

The panel further said Palparan himself had earlier stated that he had no reason to believe that the killings were perpetrated by the CPP-NPA.

But in his latest statement, he said: “Granting, however, that some of those victims have been suspected or accused by the military as members of the CPP-NPA, thus considered enemies of the State, then the more they can be probable victims of the ‘purge’ because the CPP-NPA cannot purge someone who is not among them.”

The commission maintained that with the “purge theory” discredited, the only other theory left is that certain elements or connected to some military officers are responsible for the killings.

“The victims, according to Gen. Palparan and others, were enemies of the State; hence, their neutralization,” the panel said.

Alston also called on the government to re-evaluate the “problematic aspects” of the counter-insurgency strategy, which can be attributed to the increase in extrajudicial executions.

Bayan Muna party-list Reps. Satur Ocampo and Teodoro Casiño, meanwhile, challenged Arroyo to act decisively by issuing an order to the military not to carry out attacks against activists.

In its group alone, Bayan Muna claims 127 of its members had been killed since 2001.

Casiño said the President must act on the recommendations of Alston and the Melo Commission. Ocampo further said the government should sack Esperon and National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, and prosecute Palparan to put a stop to the killings.