It is important to point out that while the Melo Commission report is kept under wraps, with only alleged parts of it revealed piecemeal, as suits the purposes of Malacañang, there can not be any meaningful nor even worthwhile response to it except that of continuing caution, if not skepticism. What the human rights organizations, progressive and militant groups whose ranks are being decimated by the killings and abductions, as well as the general public have to go by, are what is already known about the Melo Commission’s composition, powers, predilections and biases, and methods of investigation. On this basis an informed opinion can be made about what the commission is capable of concluding and recommending in its final report to Mrs. Arroyo.
BY CAROL PAGADUAN-ARAULLO
Business World
Posted by Bulatlat
The Melo Commission created by the Arroyo administration to address extrajudicial killings of activists and journalists has submitted its 89-page report to Mrs. Arroyo but she has so far refused to make it public. All we know about it are the initial, off-the-cuff comments by the commission’s chairman and a bishop-member to the media, subsequent Malacañang press releases and Mrs. Arroyo’s pretentious, if rather smug, statements to the diplomatic corps during the traditional vin d’honneur at the Presidential Palace.
The refusal of Malacañang to release the report for the scrutiny of all interested parties, not least of all the aggrieved kin of victims of summary executions, attempted killings and enforced disappearances, is a telling indicator of Mrs. Arroyo’s sincerity and seriousness in her avowal to put an end to these human rights violations and punish those responsible. It is important to point out that while the Melo Commission report is kept under wraps, with only alleged parts of it revealed piecemeal, as suits the purposes of Malacañang, there can not be any meaningful nor even worthwhile response to it except that of continuing caution, if not skepticism.
What the human rights organizations, progressive and militant groups whose ranks are being decimated by the killings and abductions, as well as the general public have to go by, are what is already known about the Melo Commission’s composition, powers, predilections and biases, and methods of investigation. On this basis an informed opinion can be made about what the commission is capable of concluding and recommending in its final report to Mrs. Arroyo. The overwhelming perception, then and now, is that the commission has lacked the independence, credibility, powers and funding to come up with any significant report but that its findings would likely be used to further whitewash any government culpability.
For example, much has been made of Mr. Melo’s revelation that a “majority of the victims were leftist-activist-militants” and that the suspected assailants belonged to the military. At the risk of sounding facetious, apart from journalists killed, wasn’t the Commission supposed to look precisely into the killings of this particular category of people? And how could it have concluded otherwise about the involvement of military men as assailants without appearing to be deaf, blind and dumb to the glaring facts and the clear pattern of said killings that can be gleaned even from newspaper reports.
But Mr. Melo is quick to say, “We don’t want to tag the entire military establishment, only elements of the military who were allowed to do their thing without supervision from higher authorities.” So there it is, the built-in limitation of the so-called independent commission of inquiry that was implicit upon its creation: the premise that the extrajudicial killings cannot be part of state policy, that these have nothing to do with the Arroyo regime’s vow of “all-out war against the Left” and its latest counter-insurgency programs, Oplan Bantay Laya I and II, which speaks of “neutralizing” and “dismantling” the communist movement’s legal, political infrastructure with a clear plan to “target” specific key individuals, leaders and organizers of legal, militant mass organizations.
