Military behind killings of activists — Alston report

THE United Nations Human Rights Council said the military deliberately targeted and systematically hunted down leaders of leftist organizations, resulting into hundreds of cases of extrajudicial killings in the country in the past six years.

This conclusion was based on the nine-month investigation on the human-rights abuses in the country by UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions Philip Alston, following his 10-day visit last February. Alston conducted interviews with victims and witnesses to 57 incidents involving 98 extrajudicial executions.

In his final report, Alston, an international lawyer and professor at the New York University, confirmed what he had already disclosed in a preliminary report submitted to the UN body in March this year. The special rapporteur called on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to “take concrete steps to end such operations,” as a significant number of the extrajudicial executions are the result of “deliberate targeting by the military as part of counterinsurgency operations against the communist rebels.”

Read Alston’s final report.

Since Arroyo came into power in 2001, the number of extrajudicial killings against leftist activists and journalists has sharply increased, ranging from a hundred to over 800 victims. Arroyo has faced criticism from both international and local bodies for failing to address the spate of killings and enforced disappearances under her term. In his preliminary report, Alston already declared that the government should take immediate steps to solve the killings. (Read related reports here and here.)

Alston also disputed the military’s claim that “many or all” of the executions have been committed by communist armed groups as part of an internal purge.

He said that while the New People’s Army (NPA) — the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) — “does commit extrajudicial executions, sometimes dressing them up as ‘revolutionary justice’,” the evidence that it is engaged in a large-scale purge is “strikingly unconvincing.”

“The military’s insistence that the ‘purge theory’ is correct can only be viewed as a cynical attempt to displace responsibility,” Alston said, adding that the military is in a state of denial concerning the involvement of its soldiers in the killings.

It doesn’t help, he added, that not a single soldier has been convicted in any of the cases.

He said the failure can be traced to a number of reasons, among them the police’s reluctance to investigate the military; poor cooperation between police and prosecutors in gathering evidence; lack of witnesses; the Office of the Ombudsman’s lack of independence from the executive branch; and the series of Executive Orders prohibiting military officers to appear before congressional investigations.

State security forces, however, rejected the Alston report’s claims. Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) spokesman Lt. Col. Bartolome Bacarro insisted that the military has no policy to engage in extrajudicial killings.

The Philippine National Police (PNP), on the other hand, said it is treating Alston’s findings as “his opinion, but whether or not these are supported by evidence that can stand in judicial scrutiny in any court of law…is another matter.” The PNP has always maintained that the killings were part of an “internal purge” in the ranks of the communist movement.

Following Alston’s findings, militant groups like the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan urged the legislative and judiciary branches to chastise the military. Senators likewise challenged the Arroyo government to go after elements in the military who were responsible for the killings.

Though Arroyo has been going around assuring the international community of her government’s adherence to human rights standards, how serious that commitment is, human rights advocates said, will also depend on how she would deal with the Alston report’s key recommendations, which include the following:

• Extrajudicial executions must be eliminated from counterinsurgency operations.

• As Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, the President must take concrete steps to put an end to those aspects of counterinsurgency operations which have led to the targeting and execution of many individuals working with civil society organizations.

• The Government should immediately direct all military officers to cease making public statements linking political or other civil society groups to those engaged in armed insurgencies.

• Transparency must be introduced to the “orders of battle,” “watch lists,” and similar list of individuals and organizations maintained by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Philippine National Police, and other elements of the national security system.

• The witness protection program should be reformed and fully implemented.

• The Commission on Human Rights should should guard its independence and increase its effectiveness.

• The Inter-Agency Legal Action Group (IALAG) — an executive body created apparently to dismantle civil society and party list organizations believed to be fronts for the CPP — should be abolished, and the criminal justice system should refocus on investigating and prosecuting those committing extrajudicial executions and other serious crimes.

• The Supreme Court should take all available measures to ensure the effective prosecution of extrajudicial executions.

• The Ombudsman’s office should begin to fulfill effectively its independent constitutional role in responding to extrajudicial killings plausibly attributed to public officials.