MANILA -- Senate Minority Leader Aquilino ?Nene? Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today lamented that the Melo Commission?s investigation into the extra-judicial killings of political activists and journalists is getting nowhere…
What is Operation Phoenix? How can an almost-40-year-old counterrevolutionary program mounted on foreign shores provide relevant insights in explaining the current murderous spree in the Philippines? By Joel Garduce Ibon…
The similarities of the atrocities during martial law and today are chilling. Hooded men knocking down doors and dragging out victims in the dead of night. Assassins on motorcycles. Killers shooting victims in cold blood, often in close range. Anguished relatives looking for answers and, most important of all, justice.
By Carlos H. Conde
davaotoday.com
MANILA ? Four years ago, Dee Batnag-Ayroso, a 37-year-old mother of two, lost her husband Honorio when gunmen abducted him. Honorio was never found. And much as Dee still wants to cling to the hope that he?s still alive somewhere, the continuing killings and abductions of Honorio?s fellow activists heightens her desperation.
Dee was in her home last month when she heard on the radio that Ernesto Ladica, a member of the leftist political party Bayan Muna, was shot dead while having coffee with his three sons outside their home in Misamis Oriental. Dee?s husband was also a member of Bayan Muna; many of the victims of these murders and forced disappearances were members and leaders of this group.
The presidential order forming the commission is widely seen more as a political gimmick rather than as a major step toward stopping the extrajudicial killings. It was meant to mollify public outrage over the killings and clear the constitutionally impaired presidency of possible accountability.
By the Policy Studies, Publication and Advocacy Program
Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)
MANILA — Unless the Melo Commission gets to the bottom of the extrajudicial killings, it will suffer the same fate as previous presidential probe bodies. The task that challenges the commission is to make itself credible by holding an impartial and independent investigation of the political killings even if this would mean summoning the president for ?command responsibility? as the armed forces? commander-in-chief.
DAVAO CITY -- The deaths of two persons in two days have brought back fears of the dreaded vigilante group Davao Death Squad. A man newly released from prison was…