By John Hall
A Philippine court has sentenced 14 members of Abu Sayyaf - a militant Muslim organization with ties to Al Qaeda - to life imprisonment for a series of kidnappings in 2001 that resulted in the deaths of two American and several Filipino hostages.
The verdict - along with the deaths of several Abu Sayyaf leaders - seems to justify the U.S. decision to provide support to the Philippine military as part of its global "War on Terror."
But there is a more sinister face to this U.S. ally - a widespread campaign of repression, intimidation, arbitrary detention, disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
Since President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took office in 2001, an estimated 800 political opponents, human rights campaigners and members of groups and churches critical of her government have been assassinated. Many others have survived assassination attempts. In fact, legitimate opponents or her government are just as likely to be targeted as Muslim terrorists and Communist rebels.
The UN's special rapporteur on extra judicial killings, Philip Alston, has published a damning report on the wave of political assassinations during Arroyo's presidency: "[T]here have been many extra-judicial executions of leftist activists in the Philippines. These killings have eliminated civil society leaders, including human rights defenders, trade unionists and land reform advocates, intimidated a vast number of civil society actors and narrowed the country's political discourse."
The report asserts that "the priorities of the criminal justice system have also been distorted, and it has increasingly focused on prosecuting civil society leaders rather than their killers."
"The military," Alston added, "is in a state of denial concerning the numerous extrajudicial executions in which its soldiers are implicated."
Military leaders have suggested that the leftist activists who have been killed are the victims of a "purge" by Communist rebels, an argument Alston dismissed as "strikingly unconvincing" and one that "can only be viewed as a cynical attempt to displace responsibility." Not a single soldier has been convicted in any of the cases involving assassination of leftist activists.
Anyone who participates in anti-government advocacy is in serious danger. Even the clergy have been targeted for speaking out against the government. Bishop Alberto Ramento, a former leader of the Philippine Independent Church, was murdered in his home in Parlac City, north of Manila. Ramento, who campaigned against the killings of political activists and church workers, had led calls for the ouster of Arroyo, accusing her of cheating in the 2004 elections and of alleged human rights abuses.
Romeo Capulong, a prominent human rights lawyer and judge with the UN Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, has survived assassination attempts. Clearly no critic of the Arroyo administration - even a UN judge - is safe.
The human rights lawyers who remain in the Philippines work in a twilight world of fear; they vary their schedules, never get into strange cabs, avoid meeting in public and remain constantly vigilant.
The identity of the assassins is often known, but police "investigations" predictably fail to bring the murderers to justice. The Philippine National Police force is itself often implicated in the murders. The Arroyo government has launched several formal investigations of the extrajudicial killings, but there is little reason to suppose that these are intended to achieve anything beyond placating foreign critics.
The police often report they are unable to proceed "due to a lack of witnesses," who are often too afraid to testify. Their fear is well-founded; the government routinely fails to take measures required under the Witness Protection, Security and Benefit Act.
Reporters Without Borders, the international organization that promotes freedom of the press, ranks the Philippines as among the most dangerous places for journalists. Since the country's return to democracy in 1986, more than 50 have been murdered.
The government has resorted to barring foreign human rights investigators. Brian Campbell of the International Labor Rights Fund attempted to travel the Philippines to continue investigations into the widespread killings of union leaders there, only to be informed that he was on a "blacklist" and was barred from entering the country. Campbell had previously conducted an investigation of the murder of the union leader Diosdado Fortuna, an outspoken government critic.
The government's campaign of oppression has cost it little on the international stage. In 2006, the Philippines was elected as a member of the UN Human Rights Council. Although the U.S. State Department has reported that Philippine security forces have been responsible for a wide range of human rights abuses, American financial aid has increased year by year since 2001. In November 2007, the Senate increased regular military funding from $11 million to $30 million.
U.S. support for the Philippine military and security forces should be halted immediately. The realpolitik of the "War on Terror" should not serve to obscure the appalling reality of what the Arroyo regime is doing.
John Hall is an associate professor of law and director of the Center for Global Trade and Development, Chapman University School of Law, Orange, California. He worked previously at Public Interest Law Center in Manila.