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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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The massacre of agricultural workers at Hacienda Luisita is a pure gross violation of fundamental rights of workers to strike and assert their rights as defined in ILO Convention 97 and in the ECOSOC rights. Both the United Luisita workers union (ULWU) and CATLU went on strike as negotiations failed over workers’ demand for a small increase in wages and better work conditions. One of the key demands was their right to the land as provided for under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law. Yet, DOLE (Dept. of Labor and Employment) issued the assumption of jurisdiction order to the police and military to enforce it. When three attempts to disperse them through water cannons failed, shots were fired at the unarmed workers, seven died and 72 were injured. The killings did not stop with the massacre but persons who supported the workers, including Bishop Alberto B. Ramento of the Iglesia Filipino Independiente church, two leaders Marcel Beltran and Abelardo with Fr. William Tedena were killed in separate occasions

Even when farmers return to the land awarded by the Department of Agrarian Reform, as in the case of San Agustin Farmer Beneficiaries Multi-purpose Cooperative in Palo, Leyte, they are killed and butchered by armed men who go unpunished. The guns do silence the law.

The Arroyo regime has initiated the implementation of the Mining Act of 1995 liberalizing the mining sector by proclaiming its National Policy Agenda for Revitalizing the Mining Industry as recommended by the World Bank. This process has increased the intensive exploitation of the mineral riches of the country like gold, silver, copper, chromite and nickel. But the commercial mining activities as well as the logging operations of various corporations affect both the present and future generations of the indigenous peoples. If perpetuated, it will destroy the ancestral domain, culture and identity of the people.

The documentation presented at the PPT, including the compelling testimony of Senator Madrigal revealed how the Arroyo government by relocating the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) under the jurisdiction of the Dept. of Agrarian Reform will not only compromise its constitutionally mandated independence but pave the way to usurp the land of the indigenous people, leading to displacement from their ancestral home, and loss of land and customary rights. The evidence is very much reflected in the cases of Toronto Ventures in Zambaonga and Lafayette Mining Corp. in Rapu Rapu island whereas it is used for massive landgrabbing in the Island of Boracay.

Such forms of rights violations have brought about a resistance by the people to claim their rights to land, culture and identity. But it has been met with various human rights violations manifested in arbitary arrest, persecution, torture, killings, destruction of property and land by military forces including extrajudicial killings as testified by Dr. “Chandu” Claver a Kankanaey and leader of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance and Bayan Muna in Kalinga who was ambushed by masked men while in his car with his family. His wife succumbed to gunshot wounds while he and his child survived and now seeking asylum in Canada to protect themselves.

Out of the 37.7 million workers, there are 4.1 million unemployed and 7.5 million underemployed. This situation has brought about the exodus of around 3,200 workers every day to find a living or better work abroad, not including hundreds or possibly thousands more leaving as trafficked or undocumented workers facilitated by unscrupulous recruiters who have proliferated as a result of deregulation implemented by the Arroyo government. There are around 9 million Overseas Filipino Workers abroad who have the tremendous capacity to remit the amount of US $13 billion every year besides an estimated additional $3-4 billion remitted through informal channels. Due to the feminization of poverty, more than 70% of the workers who leave abroad for landbased work are women

But since the share of labor in the national income has fallen, reflecting low wages and minimum wage far behind the rise in cost of living, the organized sector of unions have demanded for wage evaluation and increase with better work conditions. This process has been met with arrogance of power of corporations, particularly TNCs like Toyota, Nestle and others who have with impunity either dismissed union leaders or used the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the armed forces to end workers actions. The DOLE has used the assumption of jurisdiction order to provide military forces the right to intervene in labor disputes. There is no recognition accorded to ILO recommendations for respect of workers rights as seen in the Toyota workers case, well documented and presented to the jury. Thus corporations supported by the Arroyo government continue to violate labor rights with no accountability.