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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 Security Engagement Board created by this agreement is a joint committee of defense officials and military officials of both the Philippines and the United States. And the purpose of this committee is to oversee the anti-terror campaign in the country. The campaign was begun in 2001 as a campaign against the Abu Sayyaf in the south of the country, right after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York. It was a creation of the US and experimented in collaboration with the AFP against the Abu Sayyaf as an anti-terror campaign. In that campaign the US special forces and the AFP were abducting even suspects or families of Abu Sayyaf sympathizers and innocent members of communities in Mindanao. Only later was it decided to expand the campaign to cover the entire Philippines in the nationwide anti-insurgency campaign. Like the campaign against Abu Sayyaf, the nationwide campaign does not make any distinction between advocates who have a legal status and those involved in armed confrontations with the government. And it is being carried out by AFP instructed and supported in action by US Special Operations Forces (SOF).

These US Special Operations Forces are the most highly-trained elite units of the US Army who specialize in what is called Low Intensity Conflict Warfare. In other countries, the deployment of US Special Operations Forces, especially in Guatemala and Colombia, as well as in Indonesia during the Suharto dictatorship, have been exposed by among others the Amnesty International as having been responsible for training local troops that have been involved in dirty tricks, including abductions, extra-judicial killings, and even massacres of civilians who have been known to be sympathetic to armed insurgents in those countries.

Having run out of counterinsurgency options, Bantay Laya seems to be the US-Arroyo regime’s “final solution” to the long drawn-out conflict. A novel and significant component is it’s special emphasis on brutal and punitive measures against Congressional partylist representatives and constituencies and “neutralization” of institutions and organizations, through assassination of their leaders and ordinary members. Bantay Laya’s focus on the political component and white area operations is described by veteran reporter and columnist Armando Doronila in Philippine Daily Inquirer (21 June 2006):

“The blueprint of war outlined in ‘the orders of battle’ of Oplan Bantay Laya envisages decimation of non-military segments of the communist movement. It is not designed to engage the New People’s Army in armed conflict in field warfare. It is designated to butcher and massacre defenseless non-combatants. It is therefore a sinister plan for civilian butchery, a strategy which exposes the military and police to fewer risks and casualties than they would face in armed fighting with the communist guerillas.

The emphasis of this strategy on “neutralizing” front/legal organizations helps explain why most of the victims of the past five years have been non-combatants and defenseless members of the left. During that period the number of murdered aboveground members of the Left has far exceeded fatalities of the New People’s Army in armed encounters with security forces.

This strategy is blamed for the systematic massacre of non-combatants. It offers a huge potential for human rights abuses and atrocities. It makes the regime look more cold-blooded in its methods in trying to crush the insurgency than it’s predecessors, not excluding the Marcos dictatorship. It opens the path to the slaughter of the defenseless”.