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PHILIPPINES: Probe Into Extradjudicial Killings Possible

Stella Gonzales

MANILA, Jun 17 2007 (IPS) - Will a former military officer who recently won a senate seat make good on an election promise to have extrajudicial killings and the disappearances of activists investigated?

For rights groups what is more striking than the promise is the public admission by former navy lieutenant Antonio Trillanes IV that military death squads existed.

‘’No other military officer has admitted so much,” Renato Reyes secretary general of Bayan (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan or People’s Patriotic Alliance) told IPS. “This bolsters our long-held belief that the military is behind many of the killings and abductions.”

Extrajudicial killings are summary executions and assassinations carried out without the sanction of law or a court. Human rights groups said that more than 800 people, many of them activists, have been summarily executed since Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo assumed the presidency in 2001. They blamed the military for the abductions and killings.

Trillanes was recently quoted by the influential Philippine Daily Inquirer as saying that these death squads are run by the intelligence community. “If ever, they are utilised on a case-by-case basis,” he was quoted saying.

According to Trillanes those in the regular uniformed units of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) are uncomfortable with the work of the death squads. Trillanes, who has been in military detention for almost four years for being one of the leaders of a failed mutiny in July 2003, reportedly placed third in votes cast by military men during the senatorial election.

A Philippine Military Academy (PMA) graduate, Trillanes will formally assume his senate seat on Jun.30, together with 11 other senators who were elected in May. Whether the military would allow him to go to the senate to attend sessions is the subject of speculation, and possibly a court case.

Reyes noted that Trillanes, in expressing his interest in looking into extrajudicial killings, was primarily concerned in protecting the AFP as an institution. ‘’As a professional soldier, Trillanes is perhaps wary that the AFP is losing its professionalism when its members take the law into their own hands and engage in extrajudicial killings. More than anything else, Trillanes is concerned about the institution, trying to save it from further degeneration,” Reyes said. He noted that Trillanes “has not made any strong references” to the human rights aspect of the issue, “so this is something we need to see from him”.

Still, Reyes said, an inquiry spearheaded by a former military man like Trillanes is bound to make a strong impact on the issue of extrajudicial killings. “Its biggest impact is that it exposes the military from within. The admission of the existence of death squads is a major revelation coming as it does from a junior officer,” Reyes said. “This should be used to pressure the military, its officials, and even the executive to stop death squads and the practice of extrajudicial killings.”

He said that as corollary to the issue of summary executions, Trillanes should also look into the government’s counter-insurgency program and the military’s labelling of legal people’s organisations as “communist fronts” which makes them targets of military operations, among others. But he said Trillanes, coming from the military himself, “might tend to be careful so as not to put the entire institution in a bad light”. “Maybe he will focus on the culpability of senior officers.”

Groups like Bayan hope to see Trillanes summon military top brass like AFP Chief of Staff General Hermogenes Esperon. “That would really be something to behold,” he said.

Trillanes, said Reyes, should also convince the three other PMA alumni in the Senate to support his inquiry. ‘’As former members of the military, they should at least be concerned that the AFP has been tagged here and abroad as a notorious human rights violator. They should help in making the AFP leadership accountable under the principle of command responsibility,” Reyes added.

The three senators are Panfilo Lacson, a former national police chief, Rodolfo Biazon, a former AFP chief of staff, and Gregorio Honasan, leader of several coup attempts against then President Corazon Aquino.

Meanwhile, Bayan is not convinced of President Arroyo’s sincerity when she too promised to end the killing of journalists. “There is really nothing new here. Arroyo has shown no new resolve (to end the killings),” Reyes said.

Arroyo, during a dialogue last week with a group of journalists in the presidential palace Malacañang, once more declared that she deplored the killing of journalists. “We aim to break this cycle of violence once and for all,” she said.

But Reyes noted that “contrary to her pronouncements, the killings continue”. “Of course she spoke to the media to address media killings, but this is mainly for PR (public relations) purposes,” he said. “We wonder why she can’t face the families of killed activists and give them the same assurances.”

According to media groups, 51 journalists have been killed since Arroyo became president in 2001. Government officials denied that the timing of Arroyo’s dialogue with the journalists had something to do with the scheduled visit to Manila of a team of human rights experts from the European Union on June 18.

The EU ambassador to the Philippines said the visit was meant to help the Philippine government establish special courts, train judges and prosecutors, strengthen the witness protection programme and improve the skills of forensic experts, all in an effort to stop the killing of journalists and activists.