Phillipines: Just what the CIA is famous for teaching

UN: Philippines army killed activists

GENEVA - The Philippine army has killed left-wing activists as part of its military campaign against communist rebels, a U.N. rights expert said Monday.
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"In some parts of the country, the armed forces have followed a deliberate strategy of systematically hunting down the leaders of leftist organizations," said Philip Alston, a New York University law professor charged by the U.N. Human Rights Council with investigating extra-judicial killings in the Philippines.

Alston called on President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to stop further killings and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice. The view echoes a recent demand by the U.S. Senate that the Philippines prosecute human rights violators — including soldiers — before it can receive additional military aid from the United States.

Alston visited the Philippines in February and issued a preliminary report in which he said the military was in a state of denial about its role in the deaths of about 800 opposition activists over the past six years.

In his final report, Alston dismissed theories the killings were carried out by communist groups to weed out spies and discredit the government.

"The military's argument that the leftist activists who have been killed are the victims of a 'purge' by the rebels is strikingly unconvincing and can only be viewed as a cynical attempt to displace responsibility," he said.

The Philippines military has for almost four decades been fighting rebels seeking to establish a Marxist state. Government troops are also engaged in a campaign against Islamic insurgents in the south of the country.

"The government has undertaken a range of welcome reforms, but the fact remains that not a single soldier has been convicted in any of the cases involving leftist activists," Alston said.

In his report Alston also examined other cases of extra-judicial killing in the Philippines, including the "people's courts" system operated by the communist rebels, and death squad killings of street children and petty criminals.

Original article posted here.

Sadly, very typical CIA practice spread to Phillipines

UN rights expert says Philippines army deliberately killed left-wing activists
Kiely Lewandowski

The Philippines armed forces have followed a "deliberate strategy" of killing left-wing activists, according to a report [DOC text] Monday by UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions [official website] Philip Alston [NYU Law profile]. According to the summary of Alston's report:

Many in the Government have concluded that numerous civil society organizations are "fronts" for the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed group, the New People's Army (NPA). One response has been counter-insurgency operations that result in the extrajudicial execution of leftist activists. In some areas, the leaders of leftist organizations are systematically hunted down by interrogating and torturing those who may know their whereabouts, and they are often killed following a campaign of individual vilification designed to instill fear into the community. The priorities of the criminal justice system have also been distorted, and it has increasingly focused on prosecuting civil society leaders rather than their killers.

The military is in a state of denial concerning the numerous extrajudicial executions in which its soldiers are implicated. Military officers argue that many or all of the extrajudicial executions have actually been committed by the communist insurgents as part of an internal purge. The NPA does commit extrajudicial executions, sometimes dressing them up as "revolutionary justice", but the evidence that it is currently engaged in a large-scale purge is strikingly unconvincing. The military's insistence that the "purge theory" is correct can only be viewed as a cynical attempt to displace responsibility.

Alston called for Philippines President Gloria Arroyo [official website; BBC profile] to "take concrete steps to put an end to those aspects of counterinsurgency operations which have led to the targeting and execution of many individuals working with civil society organizations." In July, Arroyo urged lawmakers [transcript; JURIST report] from both houses of Congress to pass legislation to curb extrajudicial killings and disappearances, but rights groups have said she has not fulfilled her promise to full investigate the killings.

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [official website] sent Alston to investigate claims [JURIST report] by human rights organizations that more than 800 political activists, human-rights workers, trade union officials, lawyers, and judges have been murdered throughout the country since Arroyo came to power in 2001. The Philippines government pledged to cooperate fully [JURIST report] with Alston's investigation into the alleged extra-judicial killings upon his arrival in February. AP has more.

Original article posted here.

Meanwhile another US crony struggles with rebellion and armed insurrection: The Philippines

General: Philippine army lacks strength to defeat communists

A TOP Philippine general conceded Monday the military lacked the manpower and equipment needed to defeat the nation’s communist insurgents.

Philippine troops have been battling Muslim militants, draining the military of resources vital to put down the long-running and separate communist insurgency, Major General Jogy Leo Fojas said in a report published in the broadsheet The Philippine Star.

The newspaper quoted the general as saying he doubted whether the military could “wipe out communist insurgents” by 2010.

President Gloria Arroyo pledged last year to defeat the 36-year-old rebellion by the time she left office in 2010.

Fojas, head of military operations, said the army had failed to meet a half-year target in its campaign against the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

“As of the first semester 2007, we have only dismantled three NPA fronts,” the newspaper quoted Fojas saying.

“Our target for the whole of 2007 was 18 guerrilla fronts. Our field commanders are still doing their best to meet the target,” he said.

Fojas gave no reason for missing the targets in the report.

Under its counter-insurgency plan, the military aims to dismantle about 80 percent of the 100 NPA guerrilla fronts in 69 of 81 provinces.

While 18 guerrilla fronts were targeted for dismantling this year, the remaining 62 rebel bases are set to be destroyed between January 2008 and June 2010.

A senior intelligence official was quoted saying security forces had been sidetracked by elections in May, and by efforts to hunt down Islamic militants in the south.

Some 12,000 troops are tied down in several Muslim-majority southern islands where the al-Qaeda linked Abu Sayyaf and other militant groups have been waging deadly attacks.

“Our troops are thinly spread across the archipelago and we moved so many resources to address the more immediate threat posed by Islamic militants from the Abu Sayyaf,” the unnamed in­tel­ligence official was quoted saying.

“We’re too busy putting out fires here and there in the first half of the year that rebels just took advantage of the vacuum left by the movement of our forces.”

Despite the strain on the military, Fojas said latest intelligence estimates showed NPA strength had fallen to about 6,300 fighters at the end of June, down by 900 from the end-2006.

The paper said that since 1969, more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict, one of the longest Maoist-led rebellions in Asia.

Original article posted here.