Inconceivably horrific:
The case of Maguindanao

EXACTLY a week to the first anniversary of the massacre of 58 civilians, including 32 media workers, in Maguindanao, the international advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday released its exhaustive report on many other cases of human rights violations that had visited the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

And as it is apparent in the Maguindanao massacre, the 96-page report titled “They Own the People: The Ampatuans, State-Backed Militias, and Killings in the Southern Philippines” exposes how warlordism, private armies and political patronage engender an inconceivably violent and horrific picture – dozens of cases of human rights abuse that remain unresolved to this day.

The report underscored how the national government, particularly under former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, facilitated the Ampatuans’ rise to power and protected the clan members and their militia from prosecution, granting them near total impunity in the process.

In what could be considered the first exhaustive investigation into targeted killings, enforced disappearances, abductions, torture, and sexual assault in Maguindanao, Cotabato City, and other areas in ARMM, the report featured over 80 interviews with Ampatuan insiders, their victims and the victims’ family members, witnesses to the crimes, and government officials linked to more than 50 cases of the reported atrocities.

As well, the authors of the report spoke with more than two dozen local human rights activists, academics, lawyers, and journalists.

The HRW team conducted its investigation of the cases across an eight-month period, or from December 2009 to August 2010.

From the accounts of the interviewees, the HRW pieced together gross incidents of abuse of the rights of civilians, supposedly committed by members of the Ampatuan clan while in power over the last decade. These included the killing, abduction, and forced disappearance of their political opponents along with family members and supporters, or even of those who had simply disobeyed the clan or were suspected to have wronged clan members.

According to the HRW report, the Ampatuans and their militia forces spared no one. They supposedly vented their ire on even the women, the children, and infants associated with alleged wrongdoers. Too, the report said there were hardly any limits to the method or manner of abuse that the victims were subjected to. Death by chainsaw, rape, and sexual violence were among the cases that the HRW investigated.

site of the massacre (from the HRW website)

Yet still, the perpetrators seemed to have neither guilt nor shame. The report said the incidents often unfolded in broad daylight, in full view of witnesses, and supposedly even with knowledge of the police and the military. The killers, the report said, did not take effort to conceal their identities; they travelled in vehicles easily identifiable as belonging to local government, the Ampatuans, the police or the military.

For two decades ending 2009 – or since the election of Ampatuan patriarch Andal Sr. as vice mayor after the EDSA people power revolt of 1986 – the clan had kept a tight grip on local power in Maguindanao and ARMM. The HRW report noted that for as long a period, the police, the military, and the Department of Justice looked the other way, even when confronted with reports of alleged abuses committed by clan members.

“The abuses have gone unchecked for so long that victims and their families say they have no faith in the justice system,” the HRW said. The few cases that were filed against the Ampatuans did not proper in court, or were mostly dismissed for “lack of evidence.”

President Arroyo herself had been “directly notified” of the complaints against the Ampatuans, her close political ally in ARMM who had guaranteed electoral victory for her and her candidates. Despite the reports, Arroyo “failed to act,” the HRW said.

The HRW described as “credible” reports that the Ampatuans had manipulated the 2004 and 2007 elections in favor of Arroyo and her administration. In 2004, Maguindanao was one of the provinces mentioned in the ‘Hello, Garci’ tapes of wiretapped conversations between, among others, a man presumed to be Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano and a woman alleged to be Arroyo.

In the 2007 elections, the HRW noted that Maguindanao delivered a 12-0 victory to Arroyo’s Team Unity senatorial slate. However, after the Maguindanao massacre, investigators found thousands of voter identification cards in the Ampatuans’ residences, the HRW added.

one of the many high-powered guns of the Ampatuans (from HRW website)

“The Arroyo government, in exchange for political support from the Ampatuans, tacitly permitted if not actually facilitated the strengthening of various militia forces, increasing the sale of military weaponry, and ensuring impunity for rights abuses in Maguindanao,” the HRW said.

Yet the extent of impunity that the Ampatuans enjoyed clearly went beyond Maguindanao, as even outside the province, various clan members were reported to have been allegedly involved in the murders of their political rivals and local residents who had become the object of their wrath.

According to the report, the situation was exacerbated by “the inadequacies of institutions charged with promoting human rights and accountability, including the Commission on Human Rights, the Ombudsman, and inspectors general of the AFP and PNP.”

The abuses documented by HRW were primarily carried out by members of the clan’s private army, estimated to be composed of 2,000 to 5,000 members of the Citizen Armed Force Geographical Unit (CAFGU) and Special CAFGU, Civilian Voluntary Organizations (CVOs), Police Auxiliary Units, and police from the Philippine National Police (PNP). In some cases, officers and men of the Armed Forces of the Philippines had been implicated. “What all of these individuals have in common, besides an allegiance to the Ampatuans, is an official status conferred by the government of the Philippines,” the report said.

Massive attention has since been focused on the Ampatuans and the region in the wake of the Maguindanao massacre. The HRW, however, observed that not even the world’s “worst single incident involving journalists” could deter the Ampatuans from further committing such atrocities.

Ampatuans remain in power one year later (from HRW website)

On the contrary, the massacre “seems to have set off a new round of killings to protect family members from prosecution,” HRW said, citing the murder since then of several witnesses to the massacre. In fact, of the 195 people who have been charged, including 29 members of the Ampatuan family and their allies, over half remain at large according to the report.

And while the Ampatuan clan’s militia force may be among the most abusive in the Philippines, the HRW said it is just one of nearly 100 “private armies” believed to exist across the nation, many with support from national politicians and uniformed personnel.

The label “private armies” is actually a “misnomer,” the report said, because while these forces do “act on behalf of private, and not public, interests,” it is the government that sanctions their existence, and even encourages their proliferation by providing the funds for their weapons and activities.

A senior member of the Ampatuan family was even quoted in the report to have said that the term “private army” is incorrect: “They are paramilitary units…They are created, armed, and funded by the government.”

These armies also have the “direct support of local police and military personnel,” the report said, adding that “the number of militiamen is limited only by the local government’s ability to fund operational costs.”

Human Rights Watch appealed to President Aquino to make good on his campaign promise “to abolish the private armies that flourished under President Arroyo” by taking “immediate action to disarm and disband all militias, including state-sanctioned paramilitary forces, in Maguindanao and throughout the country.”

As well, it exhorted Aquino to “institute tougher controls on local government procurement of weapons, and prosecute perpetrators of human rights abuses, regardless of position or rank,” and to push for approval by Congress of a law “that prevents local government officials from selecting or dismissing police chiefs in their jurisdiction for private purposes, and discourage nepotism.”

The HRW said: “The killings were an atrocity waiting to happen. It is up to the Aquino administration to ensure they are the last of their kind.”

The full report can be accessed here.