Every bit of evidence leads to this conclusion. More than 50 leaders and members of legal leftwing groups have been killed since 2001, when the Arroyo government came to power. The killings intensified in 2004, when National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales labeled left-wing party list groups as fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
During the 2004 elections the Armed Forces actively intervened not only in favor of administration candidates but also against left-wing party list groups. At about the same time the AFP accelerated its campaign to demonize various groups as “enemies of the state” through a high-intensity propaganda campaign that included the now infamous “Knowing The Enemy” lecture and presentation which named journalists’ and Church organizations and party list groups as part of the “legal machinery” of the CPP.
The same presentation did not conceal that the AFP was “neutralizing” party list and other personalities as part of its campaign against the so-called “insurgency”—which it absurdly claims is the cause rather than a result of the poverty of the country. The advent of 2005 witnessed more killings, including those of priests and lawyers.
Meanwhile, a host of initiatives from the Executive Department as well as Congress have targeted the media. Five bills supposedly against pornography now pending in Congress would subject broadcast and print to censorship and prior restraint as well as subsequent punishment.
The anti-terrorism bills in the same Congress uniformly allow the police to raid the residences of suspected “terrorists” and to monitor private communications. Public affairs programs have been told to submit their scripts to the Movie and Television Ratings and Classification Board before they are aired, even as the government condones the killing of journalists by ignoring them. The police habitually refuses to issue rally permits in violation of Article III Section 4 of the Constitution, and also habitually uses unrestrained violence to disperse rallies.
While crushing the insurgency is the immediate aim of a policy decision to use all means including torture, assassination, and the suppression of free expression, the opportunities for bureaucratic plunder the entry of foreign mining companies into the country would make available are likely to be the basic reason behind the government determination to stifle all forms of protests. The areas where human rights violations by the military have intensified are not only areas where leftwing party list groups have substantial mass followings. They are also potential mining sites in addition to being NPA strongholds.
What amounts to a human rights crisis reminiscent of the martial law period is driven by a material motive premised on ridding those areas mining companies are likely to exploit of protests and other “inconveniences”. Basic to the current policy is the refusal to heed popular demands for reform on a broad range of issues, among them an end to government corruption and the institution of social and economic policies that will address galloping poverty and social inequity.
Despite its pretensions, it has been evident for some time that the Arroyo government was never committed to reform, its interests being solidly based on the perpetuation of the status quo of subservience to foreign interests, and the mass poverty, mass injustice, and mass misery the semi-feudal and semi-colonial state it now presides over has perpetuated. Under these circumstances, only repression and suppression of the truth can be its response to a restive society and people. It is in the furtherance of its own narrow interests as well as those of its foreign patrons that the Arroyo government is borrowing heavily from the Marcos era book of repression.
The Arroyo government must heed the lessons of history. Posted by Bulatlat
June 13, 2005
