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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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5. The role of the United States of America

We need to see the worsening Human Rights crisis in the Philippines in the context of the United States’ strategies for global economic and military hegemony and the ensuing US led so-called “war on terror”.

The military and security agreements between the Philippines and the United States were part of the series of treaties and agreements that were imposed upon the Philippines right after the granting of formal independence by the United States to the Philippines at the end of the Second World War in 1948. The agreements assured the continued domination by the United States over the country and over the Armed Forces and internal security in particular. This was so even though the Philippines was already given formal independence.

US troops have returned to the Philippines, despite the removal of the US bases in 1992, on the basis of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) in 1999 and the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA) in 2002. Under the guise of a so-called “war on terror”, US troops have been stationed and deployed especially but not only in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Since 2001 there has been a continuous presence in the country of up to thousands of US soldiers ostensibly for counter-terrorism “trainings and exercises” but which in many cases are in reality coordinated combat operations with the Philippine armed forces. These grossly violate national sovereignty and Philippine territorial integrity.

Because of its strategic location, the Philippines is vital for the US projection of military force in East Asia to as far away as the Middle East. The country’s ports and airfields have already been used by the US as transit points and refueling stations in its wars of aggression against the people of Afghanistan and of Iraq. It is for this reason that the US seeks to maintain its control over the Philippine state and its armed forces, and seeks to defeat all progressive forces opposed to the US presence and intervention in the country.

The Armed Forces today remains the same institution which served the Marcos regime. The junior officers who committed atrocities under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos are now generals and the henchmen in Arroy’s repressive state machinery. The AFP continues to serve as an instrument of suppression and executor of extra-legal operations under the guidance and with the support of US counterinsurgency and anti-terrorism agencies, i.e. the CIA and the Department of Defense in Pentagon. The Arroyo regimes’ dependence on the US and the US trained armed forces is crucial for the survival of the regime.

The cost of such strict dependence in terms of gross violations of individual and collective rights, has been dramatically confirmed and documented in detail (see section ). The never ending military, police and paramilitary operations are the expression of all-out war, or so-called “holistic approach” in Operation Bantay Laya (OBL) or Operation Freedom Watch, a policy which has been carried out since 2002.

Bantay Laya is the latest formulation of previous counterinsurgency plans initially crafted under the Marcos regime. It is an end product of more than three decades of successive failures and frustrations of US-GRP-AFP in their attempts to crush and defeat the struggles of the people. The US, through Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency has been involved in conceptualization, planning, training of AFP personnel and execution of the plan. This work of cooperation is now done on the basis of the very controversial Security Engagement Board Agreement of 2006.