COTABATO CITY — What a bloody red carpet our government had given to Professor Philip Alston! Not only was the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings criticized by the head of the Senate Committee on Justice, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, for his comment on the dismal human-rights situation in the Philippines — a trail of blood followed Alston in his visit to the country.
DAVAO CITY ? Residents of Carmen, a village in Baguio District, this city, stormed City Hall this week to press for their longtime demand to be relocated to a safer area due to the threat posed by possible landslides.
Mothers, their small children in tow, trooped to the office of City Administrator Wendel Avisado on Tuesday and expressed their fears about the possible avalanche of loose soil, water and boulder from the mountains.
It takes convincing the electorate who have long been sickened by elections that mean nothing to their lives and future that this one is more than just a choice between Estrada’s candidates and Arroyo’s candidates and is, therefore, different. The opposition should be able to show that this is beyond ousting Arroyo and beyond retaking power.
In a press statement distributed at a Manila press conference on Wednesday, Philip Alston, the special rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, outlined his findings during his 10-day investigation in the Philippines. Among his conclusions: evidence suggests that the military is behind most of the killings, the military is in a state of denial, an intensified counter-insurgency campaign (presumably Oplan Bantay Laya) is partly to blame for the increase in the atrocities, the Melo Commission and Task Force Usig are inadequate, and the military’s line that the killings are the result of purges within the communist movement “bears all the hallmarks of a fabrication and cannot be taken as evidence of anything other than disinformation.”
Blasted. Picture shows the back of a Moro woman who was hit by M203 shrapnel during U.S.-Philippine military exercises in Tagbak, Indanan, Sulu, on Sept. 4, 2006. Incidents such as…