Philippines:
Death Squad Democracy
By James Petras &
Robin Eastman-Abaya
30 March, 2007
Petras
Website
Nearly a thousand union leaders,
clergy members, lawyers, human rights activists, peasants and elected
officials of the social action party lists led by Representative Ocampo
have been victimized.
While the Philippine government,
headed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, is under investigation
in the US Senate for the ongoing murder of her opponents, Senator Ocampo
is charged, together with 50 other government critics, of having ordered
the execution of a group of Marcos opponents… 22 years ago. The
government ignores the fact that Ocampo was in prison at that time,
a political prisoner of the Marcos dictatorship.
The irony of a former victim
of human rights abuses being accused of ‘crimes against humanity’
by a regime under growing international censure was not lost on the
Philippine public. They are accustomed to the macabre behavior of military
officers who cart around skeletal remains (‘re-cycling the bones’),
disappear and re-appear incarcerated ‘witnesses’ who testify
and recant, only to testify again.
Satur Ocampo, a 67-year-old
veteran of the anti-Marcos struggle, heads the Bayan Muna (‘People
First’) coalition. Within the pro-democracy public in the Philippines
there is a serious and urgent concern for the safety of Ocampo, now
in police/military custody. National elections are set for May and the
human rights situation is rapidly deteriorating. Over the last six months
the killing and harassment of members of the coalition of social action
parties have increased in tandem with the growing turnout at their public
meetings. Political observers have feared that this campaign will culminate
with the killing or arrest of the entire slate of leftists campaigning
in congressional elections. Their electoral base among the urban poor,
workers, peasants and women is especially vulnerable to political killings.
Unlike the upper and middle
class politicians in the major elite-based traditional political parties
(called ‘trapos’ or rags, by working class Filipinos), Ocampo
is the son of poor farmers who was born and raised in Central Luzon,
a hot bed of peasant rebellion. Many of the famous Communist HUK guerrillas
who fought to expel the Japanese occupation forces during World War
II were from this region. As a young activist and journalist in the
1960’s, Ocampo helped found the nationalist youth movement, the
Kabataan Makabayan and the Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism.
He was a well-regarded journalist and was elected vice-president of
the Philippine Press Club. When Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law
in September 1972 he was forced into hiding. He played a major role
in the formation of the National Democratic Front, which was a key element
in the overthrow of the Marcos regime in February 1986.
Ocampo spent 9 years in prison
under the Marcos dictatorship, where he was brutally tortured. In prison
he led several protests by the thousands of political prisoners. Despite
prolonged imprisonment he was never convicted by the military courts
set up by the dictator. In May 1985, he escaped prison. He re-surfaced
in 1986 to head peace talks between the new Philippine President, Corazon
Aquino, and the National Democratic Front. These talks collapsed in
1987 when Aquino ordered the military to fire on farmers who had been
demonstrating over land reform issues near the presidential palace,
killing and wounding scores. Ocampo was re-arrested in 1989 with his
wife, a fellow journalist and academic, but the Courts released them
in 1992 for lack of evidence.
In early 2001, under popular
pressure the Philippine Government agreed to allow the participation
of social action parties in national elections. Ocampo headed the list
of a coalition of leftist candidates as president of the Bayan Muna
(People First) Party and won almost 12% of the national vote. This entitled
the coalition to 3 seats in the Philippine Congress. For the first time
in many decades, progressive nationalists and leftists took their place
in Congress, debating and proposing popular social legislation. Their
advocacy of socio-economic reforms won them a great following among
the majority of poor Filipinos. Membership in their grass roots organizations
rose phenomenally. For the first time in recent decades the poor had
some of their ‘own’ as elected representatives in Congress.
On January 16, 2001 President
Joseph Estrada was ousted for corruption. His Vice President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo took over the presidency. Shortly after the May 2001
national elections Bayan Muna officials, elected provincial representatives
and activists in the more remote parts of the country, like the Visayas
region, Bicol, Mindanao and Mindoro, were assassinated. President Macapagal
took advantage of President Bush ‘war on terrorism’ to eliminate
her opposition. The Philippine president immediately pledged her regime
to Bush’s ‘coalition of the killing’ and linked her
leftist opponents with ‘global terrorism’.
The killings and kidnappings
spread and intensified in tandem with the influx of US military aid
and the arrival of military advisers. According to church human rights
groups, the list of murdered political leaders included individuals
from all sectors of civil society: journalists, political and social
activists, union leaders, clergy, lawyers and judges, peasant leaders
and human rights monitors and witnesses to human right violations were
killed. The modus operandi of the extra-judicial executions closely
resemble those of the Colombian death squads allied to the military
and Uribe government: Young men in ski masks (called ‘bonnets’)
on motorcycles shoot their victims openly, often within close proximity
of police or military camps. Arrests are almost never made, eyewitnesses
are killed and convictions are unheard of. All the data point to strong
ties between the death squads and the military and the military to the
Macapagal regime. Of the twelve Philippine military and militiamen implicated
by the regime, only three, very low-ranking soldiers have been charged
in connection with the 840 assassinations and over 200 disappearances.
Provincial student leaders
affiliated with any of the Bayan Muna coalition parties and Protestant
Church-affiliated youth social action groups as well as elderly clergymen,
women active in the provincial branches of the Gabriela (Women’s)
Party, young school teachers, village mayors and village council-people,
and human rights investigators have been murdered since January 1, 2007.
The scope of the political killings and general insecurity has forced
the US, Canadian and Australian Chambers of Commerce in the Philippines
and the governments of Canada, Norway, Switzerland and Belgium to press
the Macapagal regime to rein in the military sponsors of the death squads.
An Amnesty International report, released in August 2006, pointed to
the regime’s responsibility, documenting the killings, torture
and imprisonment of government critics and activists.
On March 20, 2007, the Financial
Times of London reported that even the anti-union Wal-Mart, Gap and
other international business groups, operating in the Philippines, urged
the Philippine government to put a stop to the killing of labor leaders,
lawyers and clergy involved in workers rights.
The government denies military
involvement and the systematic nature of the killing. Macapagal accuses
local and international human rights and religious organizations of
being “fronts for communists”. The military and police high
command dismisses the killings as ‘communist purges’ against
their own members while at the same time, announcing its campaign to
‘wipe-out’ Communists and the ‘members of Communist
fronts’. Impunity does not encourage logic.
The brazen disregard of international
opinion is illustrated by a recent killing: An eye-witness who had testified
before the United Nations Special rapporteur, Phillip Alston, on the
death squad killing of her father-in-law, was herself killed in the
same fashion – young men with ski masks on motorcycles within
a block of a heavily guarded police camp.
Despite and perhaps in defiance
of the wave of repression and terror, the leftist party list coalition
doubled its elected representatives in the 2004 elections. In congress
the poor peoples’ representatives fought for and secured important
legislation benefiting overseas workers, victims of domestic violence
and juvenile protection.
In February this year President
Macapagal Arroyo’s National Security Adviser warned her of the
growing mass support for the progressive party list candidates, describing
them as ‘Communist Fronts’. With ominous overtures he cited
their popularity as a reason to ‘disqualify’ them in the
upcoming elections (May 2007). The meaning of ‘disqualification’
became very clear when numerous men and women, including several attorneys,
leaders of indigenous minorities and peasants were murdered within days
of filing their candidacy. ‘Disqualification’ is the Macapagal
regime’s codeword for assassination.
There is a genuine danger
that Congressman Satur Ocampo will be harmed or killed if the government
or military succeeds in having him physically transferred out of the
capital, Manila, to the more remote Visayas region where the military
and death squads operate in public with total impunity. Because of the
widespread opposition to Ocampo’s arrest, the military attempted
to secretly fly him out to the Visayas in a private ‘corporate’
Cesna, despite orders to the contrary from the Supreme Court. The military
were thwarted in mid-air by a judicial ruling in the Visayas. A petition
to the Philippine Supreme Court to reject the trumped-up charges against
Ocampo is pending. The President’s spokesman reported that Macapagal
Arroyo turned ‘livid’ when she learned that Congressman
Ocampo’s attorneys had managed to file a judicial petition with
the Supreme Court. Like President Bush, judicial and constitutional
procedures are seen as restraints on absolute power.
Ocampo is not alone. His
comrade in the Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) labor party, the 75-year-old
veteran labor leader, Congressman Crispin Beltran, has languished for
the last 16 months in a military prison hospital under trumped-up charges
of rebellion during the Marcos dictatorship over 25 years ago.
The government under ‘President’
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (who is on tape instructing her advisers to
rig the presidential election in 2004) has gone to great lengths to
physically annihilate political opponents and social movement leaders
–who are increasingly seen as the genuine representatives of the
great majority of the Filipinos. Except for the unconditional support
of the Bush White House, her regime faces increasing international ostracism
and isolation. Yet unless voices are raised, particularly in the run-up
to the congressional elections, popular leaders like Satur Ocampo, Beltran
and many others will not be allowed to participate or even escape Macapagal’s
‘masked motorcyclist’ death squads.
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