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Arroyo Regime’s Abuses Qualify as ‘Crimes Against Humanity’: Hague Tribunal

Published: March 26, 2007   |     |     |   Subscribe: RSS or Email    

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Educational and health facilities have been seriously affected as the public share in health expenditure has been reduced from 41 % in 2000 to 30 % in 2004. Because of the lack of educational infrastructure, costs of sending children to public school and other factors due to poverty, 2,5 million children are working as laborers and 1,5 million can be qualified as street children.

The denial of these basic health and social rights is a consequence of the crisis of the Philippine economy where the government has not addressed the root causes but has continued the exploitation of the people and its resources with impunity for the benefit of the local elite and foreign dominant powers.

The growth and development of any nation lies in the hard work of peasants, fisherfolk, workers, indigenous peoples, women and their communities. But when these very people face intense poverty, hunger, unemployment, landlessness and loss of all resources, then development is meaningless because life itself is threatened and communities are destroyed. This is the hard reality of the Philippines.

A particular attention has to be given to the three main sectors of the Filipino people, peasantts, indigenous peoples and the industrial workers.

Based on recent government statistics and the study conducted by Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, 7 out of 10 Filipino farmers are landless. The farmers face extremely high rates of land rents and usury is so high that it ranges from 100%-400% per cropping season. Farm inputs remain expensive but the products of farmers are very cheap with trade liberalization. This has led to the bankruptcy of many peasants, where they remain in debt. This situation further increases disparity between peoples and regions.

Compounding the problem of peasant bankruptcy, corporations were able to take control and amass land through the promotion of agribusiness contract growing and leasehold under the corporatized market-oriented comprehensive agrarian reform program promoted by the World Bank. This has led to less than a third of landowners owning more than 80% of agricultural land while small farmers are being ejected from the lands they have been tilling for years.

Faced with the struggle to keep alive, farmers have organized themselves under KMP to claim their rights through the democratic process. This resistance is now faced with repression by the state through increased militarization of the rural areas. Statistics show that almost 60% of the victims of extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances are farmers, majority of whom are members of the peasant movement KMP. These killings of the peasant leaders are not isolated but planned and systematic. A campaign is carried out to slander the victim prior to the killing. No proper investigations are carried out and the state remains in a state of denial. Meanwhile witnesses are threatened and thus the pattern of impunity reigns with no accountability.