The Philippine People Are Under Attack from Washington â€” and Their Own Government

**kagalingan** · April 24th, 2016 02:58 AM

Kakampi ba talaga america

The Philippine People Are Under Attack from Washington -- and Their Own Government

The Philippine People Are Under Attack from Washington — and Their Own Government
12/03/2015 07:48 pm ET | Updated Dec 03, 2015
Azadeh Shahshahani
Legal & Advocacy Director, Project South; Past President, National Lawyers Guild

A tribunal this year uncovered grave violations against the human, economic, and cultural rights of Filipinos by Washington and their own leaders.

By Vanessa Lucas and Azadeh Shahshahani

The Filipino people are under attack.

The Lumad, for example — an indigenous group in the southern Philippines — are being forced to leave their ancestral lands and the source of their livelihood to make way for mining operations and land conversion. Resistance is deadly.

In the month of August alone, there were two massacres that left nine dead. On August 30, the army and paramilitary forces occupied the Alternative Learning Center for Agriculture and Livelihood Development, an award winning school for indigenous youth. The director of the school, Emerito Samarca, was taken by force and was found dead in a classroom the next day. He had an ear-to-ear slit across his throat and gunshot wounds in his chest.

The same day Samarca’s body was found, Dionel Campos — the chairman of a Lumad organization campaigning against mining — and his cousin Datu Juvillo Sinzo were executed in front of hundreds of residents in Lianga. Sinzo, who was separated from the crowd, was tortured by paramilitaries. They smashed his arms and legs with a wooden stick before shooting him.

Karapatan, a Filipino human rights organization, has raised the issue of the Lumad peoples at the United Nations Human Rights Council. But given the culture of impunity in the Philippines — often exacerbated by implicit support from the U.S. government — activists are pursuing other means to hold the perpetrators of crimes like these to account.

To help give voice to the victims of human rights violations, for three intense days this summer we participated in the International People’s Tribunal on Crimes Against the Filipino People. The tribunal was convened in Washington by human rights defenders, peace and justice advocates, lawyers, jurists, academics, people of faith, and political activists. It was held at the behest of victims of human rights violations to shine a spotlight on official crimes and hold the responsible governments accountable.

Evidence supporting the allegations of rights abuses — including testimony from over 30 lay and expert witnesses — was provided to an international panel of prosecutors led by former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark and considered by an international group of jurors from a range of disciplines. The tribunal found the Aquino regime responsible for systematic violations of the civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights of the Filipino people. The conveners also held the U.S. government responsible on account of its military intervention, economic and environmental exploitation, and imposition of neoliberal globalization on the Philippines.

Here’s what we learned.

Violations of Civil and Political Rights

The first group of charges focused on gross violations of civil and political rights, including extrajudicial killings, disappearances, massacres, torture, and arbitrary arrests and detention, as well as other brutal and systematic attacks on the basic democratic rights of the Filipino people.

A key driver of the most egregious abuses has been the U.S.-inspired counter-insurgency program Oplan Bayanihan. Launched in 2011 by Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, it’s supposedly a program to fight communist guerillas, but in practice doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. The reality is that Oplan Bayanihan is used to target any individuals or groups the government classifies as a threat to its agenda.

Amaryllis Hilao Enriquez, a former Marcos-era political prisoner, described Oplan Bayanihan as a “repackaging” of the U.S.-led “war on terror” for the Philippines. The operation was devised with the help of the U.S. government, which provides technical assistance, military aid, and occasionally actual U.S. military personnel.

Following Enriquez’s testimony, the jurors heard personal accounts of gross human rights violations.

Maria Aurora Santiago, for example, recounted the death of her partner, Wilhemus Geertman — a Dutch lay missionary who was targeted by the Philippine military due to his involvement in peasant organizing and advocacy. He was the executive director of Alay Bayan-Luson, a grassroots organization involved in disaster preparedness, mitigation, and victim assistance, especially to poor communities. Geertman was also involved in numerous environmental campaigns against mining, logging, and dam projects. Accused of belonging to the New People’s Army — the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines — he was shot to death in his office by military and police assets.

Attorney Maria Catherine Salucon, a founding member of the National Union of People’s Lawyers, then opened the jurors’ eyes to the fact that even lawyers working on human rights cases are subjected to open harassment and intimidation. Like Geertman, Salucon — who represents clients in cases involving violations of human rights and political prisoners — has been subjected to red tagging and vilified as a member of Communist Party.

One day, Salucon and her paralegal William Bugatti had lunch with relatives of their detained political prisoner clients. During the meal, Bugatti told Salucon that he was taking precautionary security measures and advised her to do the same. Later that night, he was gunned down by government security forces.

After learning of Bugatti’s death, Salucon was told by a client — a civilian asset for the Philippine National Police — that the PNP was investigating her to “confirm” that she was a “red lawyer.” Salucon also learned she was being secretly followed by military intelligence officers. Salucon took the matter to the courts and was granted a protective order that allowed her access to military records pertaining to her, but the military continues to deny conducting any surveillance activities against her at all.

Melissa Roxas, a Filipina-American activist, then testified concerning her May 2009 abduction and torture at the hands of Philippine military. She was captured while conducting health surveys organized by a social justice alliance.

Roxas, who has also conducted fact-finding missions into rights abuses, and two Filipino volunteers — John Edward Jamdoc and Juanito Carabeo — were abducted by approximately 15 men armed with high-powered rifles, some of them wearing ski masks or bonnets. They were handcuffed and blindfolded and forced into a van.

Roxas was held for six days at a military camp, most of which she spent in handcuffs and blindfolded, and accused of belonging to the New People’s Army. She was subjected to food deprivation, forced into stress positions, beaten, choked, suffocated with plastic bags, and repeatedly smashed headfirst against a wall. She was lectured on the evils of communism by torturers who threatened her with death and tried to force her to sign documents confessing that she was a militant. Despite her ability to describe some of her abductors and torturers in court, no one has been arrested or charged for her abduction and torture.

**kagalingan** · April 24th, 2016 03:00 AM

Continuation

Violations of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

The second group of charges concerned an array of abuses against Filipinos’ economic, social, and cultural rights — especially through the imposition of neoliberal economic policies, various attacks on the livelihoods of ordinary people, the transgression of their economic sovereignty, and the destruction of the environment.

The scope of these violations was put into perspective by economist Jose Enrique Africa, who presented an overview on the general socio-economic situation of the Philippines. Notably, he pointed out, around two-thirds of Filipinos — some 66 million people — are poor, living on just $2.80 or less per day. However, the wealth of the 10 richest Filipinos has more than tripled under the Aquino administration.

While ordinary Filipinos struggle to make ends meet, foreign investors favored by the government are making out like bandits. Foreign investment makes up 40 percent of approved investment in the Philippines over the last decade and a half, he said — not even counting dummy corporations that would increase those numbers. According to Africa, the equivalent of some 98 percent of domestic production is exported for the benefit of foreign firms and economies. Trade and investment liberalization have made the Philippines one of Asia’s most open economies while destroying its national wellbeing.

Mining companies in particular boosted their profits some 115 percent between 2010 and 2014. Yet the Philippines doesn’t benefit from its mineral resources. In the last five years, dozens of communities and thousands of families have been temporarily or permanently displaced — often violently — to give way to mining projects, especially in Mindanao.

Despite the Philippines’ rich natural resources and large, productive labor force, the country has become a service and trading economy more than a producing economy. The manufacturing sector, at a little under a quarter of gross domestic product, has contracted to as small a share of the economy as it was six decades ago. And agriculture, at 10 percent of GDP, is the smallest it’s been in history. The result has been widespread joblessness and poverty.

Africa noted that the U.S. is the biggest foreign investor in the Philippines, and American corporations often dominate local firms.

Unsurprisingly then, U.S. corporations are among the biggest direct beneficiaries of the neoliberal economic policies favored by Washington. For example, the Philippine government has hailed the creation of 1 million jobs in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, especially call centers. However, BPOs are dominated by foreign investors, with U.S. companies alone providing up to 31 percent of foreign equity.

Another example lies in the country’s drive towards privatization, which is likewise supported by the U.S. Power privatization has made Philippine electricity the most expensive in Asia, even more so than in Japan or South Korea. Water privatization has made its water the third most expensive after Japan and Singapore. According to Africa, U.S. firms account for 45 percent of the Philippine electric power system’s imports and 10 percent of its water equipment and services imports.

Among the U.S. government’s more egregious interventions, Africa testified, is the Arangkada Philippines Project, or TAPP. Funded with $1 million from USAID since 2010, the project has lobbied Philippine policymakers on hundreds of regulatory issues. Administered by the American Chamber of Commerce and the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce in the Philippines, TAPP is among the most aggressive entities seeking to change the 1987 Philippine Constitution and remove the last legal impediments to foreign capitalism in the country. Meanwhile there are at least five other USAID economic policy intervention projects cumulatively worth $74 million.

Following Mr. Africa, multiple witness took the stand to describe how these investment policies have negatively affected the Filipino people — particularly in agriculture and agrarian reform (or lack thereof), the situation of the urban poor, the displacement of indigenous peoples, attacks on unions and labor rights, human trafficking, illegal rate hikes for mass transportation, the privatization of health care, and other violations of economic, social, and cultural rights.

Azadeh Shahshahani (*ashahshahani) is a human rights attorney based in Atlanta, Georgia and a past president of the National Lawyers Guild. In July 2015, she took part in the International Peoples Tribunal on Crimes against the Filipino people as a member of the jury.

This article originally appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus.

**dreamur** · April 24th, 2016 09:46 AM

Typical of a duterte supporter. Posting articles without verifiying authenticity first.

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**dr. d** · April 24th, 2016 09:49 AM

Originally Posted by ;2718392

Typical of a duterte supporter. Posting articles without verifiying authenticity first.

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it is not unique to duterte supporters only, po.

**ClaNker** · April 24th, 2016 09:59 AM

Iba talaga tong mga duterte fanatics. Basta post lang ng post.

**Luap** · April 24th, 2016 10:19 AM

Hehehehe. I was once a consultant in one of these USAID projects and most of those who oppposed the projects are the big Filipino owned coporations who wanted to monopolize utility companies hence the high cost of utilities in the country.

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