President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has announced the proposal for the appointment of a high level commission to investigate allegations of extrajudicial killings, as well as to supervise the actual investigations carried out by Task Force Usig. This announcement comes as there is mounting pressure from within the Philippines as well as internationally against the government for allowing large scale extrajudicial killings to take place.
All this seems to make one person very uneasy, that is General Jovito Palparan Jr. who in popular parlance is now know as “berdugo” (executioner) and vilified by leftist groups as the “butcher”.
In a recent interview given from Lupao, Nueva Ecija, General Palparan defended the killings stating that “they are not innocent” meaning that extrajudicial killings have been carried out only against those who he considers to be enemies of the state. He even expresses fears that the outcry about murders at home and abroad might cool the government’s fervour about going after the NPA. He is quoted to have said that “it might influence their thinking so that the leadership might follow the enemy’s line and slow us down.”
Human rights groups have documented large scale killings in places where General Palparan had been posted. For example in Tarlac, Leyte, where several killings took place in recent weeks, human rights organisations have documented 22 cases of extrajudicial killings from February 10 to May 12 this year, 13 victims of torture, 16 victims of physical assault and arbitrary arrest and 17 cases of arbitrary detention and many other victims of bombings and indiscriminate firing. Cases have also been reported from Mindoro where he was stationed earlier. These allegations include abductions and summary executions of a peasant leader, Eddie Gomanoy, human rights activists and opposition political party members. Human rights organisations have given numbers as high as 27 activists and innocent civilians killed in Oriental Mindoro. A much longer list of gross human rights abuses is given by the human rights organisations including the supervision of making of lists for the elimination of persons.
In the light of the president’s claims to be taking action against extrajudicial killings General Palparan’s resistance to the change of policy raises many questions as to the role of a military general within the political structure of the Philippines. President Macapagal Arroyo praise of General Palparan in the State of the Nation Speech (SONA) itself raises questions as to the political structure of command within the country. It is within this same speech that the president called upon everyone to work together to eliminate extrajudicial killings. These two parts of the speech clearly send contradictory messages.
The basic question that is raised by the ongoing extrajudicial killings, which continue even as the president makes promises to halt them, is as to whether the highest political authority in the Philippines is able to assert its will against the military to stop gross human rights abuses. The president who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces is under obligation to uphold the democratic constitution of the Republic of the Philippines, as well as to ensure compliance with the international treatises to which the Philippines is a party. Is a general allowed to stand in the way will be the question asked by local as well as international observers who take the president’s word of her resolve to stop the extrajudicial killings as genuine. The sceptics who may doubt the seriousness of this resolve will see in the continuing influence of General Palparan a confirmation for their scepticism.
The people of the Philippines who live under an enormous fear psychosis created by daylight extrajudicial killings and abductions need a reassurance that the government of the Philippines is committed to their protection. For the surviving victims of the families who have suffered such killings there will a need for reassurance of proper investigations into what their loved ones have suffered. The country’s faith in the democratic institutions cannot survive without genuine and decisive action capable of producing such reassurances. A military general’s rhetoric about “the enemies of the nation” cannot provide the sustenance to resurrect and to revitalize the people’s faith in the country’s capacity to remain within the framework of democracy and rule of law.
