James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya
Introduction
Since President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo joined the US global “War on Terrorism”, the Philippines has become the site of an on-going undeclared war against peasant and union activists, progressive political dissidents and lawmakers, human rights lawyers and activists, women leaders and a wide range of print and broadcast journalists. Because of the links between the Army, the regime and the death squads, political assassinations take place in an atmosphere of absolute impunity. The vast majority of the attacks occur in the countryside and provincial towns. The reign of terror in the Philippines is of similar scope and depth as in Colombia. Unlike Colombia, the rampaging state terrorism has not drawn sufficient attention from international public opinion.
Between 2001 and 2006 hundreds of killings, disappearances, death threats and cases of torture have been documented by the independent human rights center, KARAPATAN , and the church-linked Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research. Since Macapagal Arroyo came to power in 2001 there have been 400 documented extrajudicial killings. In 2004, 63 were killed and in 2005, 179 were assassinated and another 46 disappeared and presumed dead. So far in the first 2 …½ months of 2006 there have been 26 documented political assassinations.
An analysis of the class and social background of the victims of this systematic state terror in 2005 demonstrates that the largest sector, about 70, have been peasants and peasant leaders involved in land and farm labor disputes. The military has invariably accused the murdered and disappeared peasants of links to or sympathy with the communist guerrillas or Muslim separatists. The victims include members of the national farmers’ association, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), as well as Igorot, Agta and Moro indigenous minority peasant leaders involved in protecting their lands. One notorious massacre occurred in late November 2005 when 47 peasants and their legal representatives held an open, public meeting over a land dispute in Palo, Leyte in the Visayas. A large force of soldiers surrounded and attacked the meeting killing 9 peasants outright and arresting over a dozen. An additional 18 ‘disappeared’ and are presumed dead.
Workers and labor leaders form the next largest group of victims of assassination (at least 18 in 2005) not including the disappeared and presumed dead. Members of a national labor federation, Kilusan Mayo Uno (May First Movement), Nestle’s Worker’s Union, Central Azucareara de Tarlac, Negros Federation of Sugar Workers, a leader of the Department of Agrarian Reform Employee Association, regional college employee union leaders and various militants in both the electrical company and bus company employee unions were murdered in 2005.
Earlier in 2005, 26 unarmed Muslim detainees in a military prison in Manila were shot protesting against their prolonged and arbitrary detention, lack of a trial date and horrific prison conditions. These men were mostly vendors and displaced peasants and fishermen living with their families in Manila. They were accused, but never convicted, of membership in the ‘Abu Sayaf’ kidnapping gang.
Seven print and radio journalists and writers were killed in 2005 as well as seven attorneys and judges involved in human rights, labor and land dispute cases. Among the religious community, there were 3 targeted assassinations of clergy and 7 church workers, all involved in advocacy work with the poor, peasants, workers and national minorities.
Another important group of victims, which overlaps with peasants and workers associations, are the 83 leaders and members of the popular left political party, Bayan Muna (The People First) and its ‘party list’ affiliates. Most were murdered in the provinces outside of Metro Manila between 2001-2005 (67 in 2005 alone). Leaders and coordinators of allied party-list groups, such as the women’s party Gabriela and the urban poor people’s party, Anakpawis (Toiling Masses), have been murdered, disappeared or wounded. Elected officials from Bayan Muna, such a Tarlac City councilman, Abelardo Ladera , were shot in broad daylight, prompting defiant provincial funeral marches. His killing followed the notorious 2004 massacre of hacienda union workers in Tarlac and the subsequent systematic elimination of witnesses.
A breakdown of the 66 death squad killings of members and supporters of the progressive political parties in 2005 include 33 from militant urban poor peoples party Anakpawis and 30 from Bayan Muna. Five members of Anakpawis and 3 from Bayan Muna have ‘disappeared’ and are presumed dead in 2005. So far three Bayan Muna officials have been assassinated in the first 10 weeks of 2006.
Since 2003, the Philippines became the 2nd most dangerous country for journalists after Iraq because of the staggering number of reporters killed and disappeared by death squads. Most recently a radio reporter involved in exposing abuses at a local mine was kidnapped by death squads working for the mine owners in late February 2006 and is presumed dead.
State sponsored terror today is reminiscent of the worst days of martial law, under the Dictator Ferdinand Marcos (1972-1986). As under Marcos the entire countryside is virtually under military control sharply limiting the role of civilian administrators. A manual published by the Macapagal regime, entitled “Knowing the Enemy” is used by the Armed Forces throughout the country to label legal mass organizations and civil rights groups, like the Philippine Association of Protestant Lawyers, as supporters of ‘terrorism’.
The combined military-death squad campaign has all the earmarks of US-sponsored ‘low intensity’ warfare against the civilian population. The military “proscribes” or labels individuals and groups as terrorists on the basis of what it claims to be ‘secret intelligence’ in order to criminalize their right to resist oppression and fight for self-determination and justify their elimination. The creation of these ‘lists’ is outside of the process of judicial scrutiny and limits any legal protection for the victims or their survivors. Using the black propaganda of a psychological warfare operation, the victims and their associations are invariably described as ‘terrorists’.
The US Connection
In December 2002 the US announced a significant expansion of its joint US-Philippine military training exercises. The first contingent of US troops landing on the southern island of Mindanao engaged in field operations against the Muslim separatists. In early 2003 then-Assistant US Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz called the Philippines the ‘Second Front in the War on Terror’. Since then tens of thousands of Muslem villagers have been forcibly displaced and hundreds have been tortured, killed or disappeared. As a result Muslim guerrilla activity has increased.
In October 2003, during a visit to the Philippines, Bush cited the Philippines as a model for the re-building of Iraq. Forgetting to mention the US invasion of the Philippines in 1898 and 13-year pacification campaign when upwards of 1 million Filipinos died, Bush described the Philippines as a “model of democracy” – a bonafide death squad democracy.
The Bush Administration’s support for the Macapagal Arroyo regime has been reciprocated: A contingent of Philippine troops was sent to Iraq over the protests of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos. These troops were only withdrawn when Iraqi resistance fighters threatened to execute captured Filipino laborers in Iraq: the Philippine economy is more dependent on remittances from its workers in the Middle East than on US aid. The lucrative reconstruction contracts, which the Philippine elite had expected to be awarded for its services to the Bush Administration in Iraq, never materialized. During 2006, another contingent 5,500 US soldiers are scheduled to arrive in Mindanao and the number of joint exercises has doubled.
Urban Popular Protest and Emergency Decrees
In 2004, Macapagal Arroyo narrowly defeated her rival in the Presidential elections in a campaign marred by violence and fraud. An audiotape released in the spring of 2005 recorded the President discussing with a top election official the rigging of the election. Amid resignations of members of her cabinet and calls for her resignation from the general public, she narrowly escaped a vote of impeachment in November 2005.
Macapagal Arroyo’s disastrous neo-liberal economic policies, the growing social and economic deterioration of the country, frantic attempts by the professionals to escape through immigration, moves by restive middle level officers and demonstrations by popular mass social movements put the Philippines back in the international news. In early February 2006, an even more devastating landslide brought on by rains and de-forestation, buried almost 2,000 townspeople on the island of Leyte. The inability of the regime to provide even the most basic aid to the victims angered the entire nation.
On February 23, 2006, the eve of the 20th anniversary of the overthrow of the
Marcos dictatorship, Macapagal Arroyo declared a state of emergency banning all rallies, demonstrations and closing opposition media. She issued orders for the arrest of 59 individuals including members of the Congress, military officers and social critics, on charges of rebellion against her regime. Rallies were planned to commemorate the end of the Marcos dictatorship and to protest the electoral fraud, corruption, economic mismanagement and human rights violations of the Macapagal Arroyo regime.
Those charged with rebellion included 6 Congress people from leftwing political parties, a human rights attorney, retired and active military officers and social activists. Most of the charges have no substance and are totally arbitrary. For example, Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) Congressman Crispin Beltran, age 73, veteran labor leader and anti-Marcos activist, was arrested shortly after the Emergency Rule declaration, at first on the basis of a 25-year-old charge made during the Marcos dictatorship. When these charges were shown to have been dropped decades earlier, he was charged with rebellion.
In 2006, repression turned from the countryside to the capital, from peasant leaders to Manila-based Congress people, media, working class and left party leaders. Of the 26 political assassinations in the first 10 weeks of 2006, 3 have been Bayan Muna officials.
The arbitrary arrest of Congressional representatives sends a signal to the legal left that the regime will not tolerate dissent or challenges to its policies even from within Congress.
Growing Opposition
In the face the disintegration of the economy and society, and the regime’s use of force to sustain its hold on power, faced with its gross incompetence in the face of several natural/ecological disasters, popular resistance has spread from the countryside to the cities. On the 20th Anniversary of the 1986 overthrow of Marcos, tens of thousands defied the State of Emergency and marched in Manila and in cities throughout the country. Over 10,000 women defied a police ban to march on International Women’s Day. Students and teachers are mounting campaigns on the campuses around the country. Former Presidents, business executives and clergy are calling for Macapagal Arroyo’s resignation and a ‘smooth transition’ within the elite, while the popular mass movements and their political representatives are demanding justice for the victims of state terror, an end to US military presence, a repeal of the value added tax, an increase in the minimum wage, land reform, a moratorium of debt payments, re-nationalization of key economic sectors and consequential peace negotiations between the state and the NPA and Muslim separatists. That Macapagal Arroyo will eventually be forced to resign is, according to officials, a likely outcome. The question is when and by whom?
March 2006
