MANILA - An effigy of Philippine President
Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino burned in front of the
Malacanang Palace in Manila this week as thousands
of people took to the streets on Human Rights Day.
The annual mobilization is of increasing
significance to Philippine activists, often the
targets of human-rights violations the government
is failing to tackle.
In spite of Aquino's
repeated rhetoric of reformism, backed by his
story of being the son of a victim of an
extra-judicial killing - Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino,
the anti-Marcos senator assassinated in
1983 on the tarmac of the
Manila airport that now bears his name - the
killing of campaigning activists have not ebbed.
Indeed, the promotion last week of a
military general with a well-known abduction case
pending against him was seen as a bitter slight
amidst a human rights-themed week during which the
army aimed to promote an image of working for
"human rights-based governance" and the government
launched an inter-agency committee focused on
solving and prosecuting old and new human rights
cases.
In Aquino's state of the nation
address in June he emphasized: "We will protect
everybody's rights, even of those who oppose us."
However, rights alliance Karapatan estimates that
in the two years to that moment - the duration of
Aquino's presidency - there were 99 extra-judicial
killings, 11 enforced disappearances, 67 cases of
torture and 216 cases of illegal arrest with
detention.
False dawns The year
began with hope of a human-rights breakthrough. An
arrest warrant was issued for General Jovito
Palparan under charges related to the 2006
kidnapping of two still missing University of the
Philippines students and a peasant farmer now
believed to be dead. But Palparan, a man loathed
and feared in equal measure by activists for his
record of abuses and unabashed vitriol for
leftists, has disappeared, surfacing only through
statements decrying the legitimacy of the court
case against him.
Progress in the
country's other headline human-rights story,
2009's "Maguindanao massacre", has been sluggish
at best. Three years on there are no convictions
for the 57 killings, with 93 wanted men still at
large.
The year has also been marked by
increasing international recognition that Aquino's
rights rhetoric is failing to match reality. In
May's Universal Periodic Review of the United
Nations' Human Rights Council, 22 countries lined
up to condemn continuing extra-judicial killings,
enforced disappearances, torture, and impunity in
the Philippines.
The United States noted
that "impunity in human-rights violations"
continues; France was "alarmed by extra-judicial
killings and enforced disappearances and
continuing violations against journalists and
human-rights defenders"; Japan said,
"extra-judicial killings continue as a significant
political issue". Six countries asked the
Philippines to act on the unmet requests of UN
special rapporteurs to visit the Philippines to
examine the human-rights situation.
In
July, Dutch national and land reform campaigner
Willem Geertman was shot dead just outside his
office in Central Luzon. While the government
initially followed the police line of a robbery
gone wrong, witnesses reported Geertman as having
been forced to his knees before being executed
with shots to the head. Fellow campaigners have
pointed to "military agents" as culpable.
In the same month, a joint statement from
the UN Special Rapporteurs on human-rights
defenders, and on extra-judicial, summary or
arbitrary executions, told of a "significant
increase" in reports of killings and death threats
against human-rights defenders since the murder of
Italian priest Fausto Tenorio in 2011.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have
also been scathing in their criticism. Human
Rights Watch's 2012 World Report notes "the
military and police still commit human rights
violations with impunity", with the government
making "little progress" in spite of its promises.
Nominal pressure has been exerted by the
US. However, while the Philippine government is
keen to recoup the US$10 million withheld from its
military aid conditional on improvement in human
rights violations, it represents only 10% of a
military assistance budget that is unlikely to
wane in the face of increasing tensions in the
South China Sea.
The political will of
Aquino to carry through his claimed reformist
mantra is questionable. Human rights rapporteurs
are refused entry, and human rights specialists
who have engaged in work with the administration
speak of little determination to reform. Given the
significant institutional blocks to meaningful
human-rights reform, without strong political will
there remains little hope of progress.
The
cases of Palparan and the Maguindanao massacre
demonstrate that the move from arrest warrant to
arrest, prosecution and conviction is seldom
achieved in the Philippine criminal justice
system. Prominent voices on the need for judicial
reform, such as renowned human-rights lawyer Jose
Manuel Diokno, have spoken of the continued
presence of political "backers" in a flawed
judicial system, with a particular focus on the
Supreme Court.
The European Union,
building on an 18-month project to improve
prosecution of human-rights cases which ended last
year, plans the launch of a "justice for all"
program that will channel some 10 million euros
(US$12.9 million) to 2015 in the hope of
generating equitable access to justice and an
improvement in criminal justice for
"disadvantaged" groups, including human rights and
social activists.
Entrenched
clientilism At the political level, the
Maguindanao massacre was a signpost of the
entrenched national-provincial clientilism that
remains a hallmark of the Philippine political
system. The accused Ampatuan clan brought national
electoral victories to then president Gloria
Arroyo in 2004; her closest rival recorded no
votes in three towns under the clan's control.
In 2006, Arroyo issued Executive Order
546, allowing local officials to hold private
armies to fight insurgents; the Ampatuan private
army was instead used to ensure it would retain
the perks of office. Aquino made an election
promise to revoke the order. He has failed to do
so.
Beyond private militias lies the
reform of a military that remains politicized and
far from under civilian control. The military has
long considered itself a bulwark against communist
insurgency, with its leaders often seeing
themselves as leading a crusade against a
political party of which membership is not
illegal. While the military's political influence
has oscillated, under former dictator Ferdinand
Marcos it gained increasing political influence,
size and funding, rising to become what one
academic termed Marcos' "Praetorian Guard".
Article 2 of the 1987 Constitution
declares that civilian authority is "at all times,
supreme over the military", yet the reality of
interdependence between civilian and military
elites seems to remain.
Palparan's
self-avowed anti-communist political party,
Bantay, was barred by the Philippine Commission on
Elections (Comelec) from running in upcoming
elections under the party-list system, created to
ensure marginalized groups are represented in
congress but subsequently used by non-marginalized
groups to secure seats.
Palparan himself
held a seat until he became a fugitive from the
law. Comelec based its decision on the notion that
an anti-communist platform did not represent a
"marginalized" sector. The Supreme Court overruled
the decision last month stating Comelec
arbitrarily limited the definition of
"marginalized".
Last month's promotion of
Colonel Eduardo Ano to brigadier general and chief
of the army intelligence service came while he
faces charges in connection with the 2007
abduction of Jonas Burgos. The case is undergoing
preliminary investigation at the Department of
Justice. As a Philippine Daily Inquirer editorial
outlined, the move "casts doubt on the sincerity
of Mr Aquino to strengthen the human-rights plank
of his administration".
With elections
looming, Aquino will be keen to make progress on
the cases of the Maguindanao massacre and
Palparan. Success in either would be well
publicized and lend credence to his reform
rhetoric. However, halting abuses against
grassroots activists - the cases that continue to
remain off the radar of the mainstream media -
will be the real test of a reform effort that must
cut across political and legal systems and create
a new dynamic between civilians and the military.
When US President Barack Obama visited
Myanmar last month, the Wall Street Journal
reported that he elaborated "a sweeping vision...
of an American-style democracy, where the military
takes orders from civilians and human-rights are
respected". It is almost 70 years since the end of
the American colonial era and the establishment of
Asia's oldest democracy, and more than 25 years
since the Philippines so-called
"re-democratization", yet these two fundamental
tenets of liberal democracy remain elusive.
Mark Dearn is based in Manila
where he works in policy for an NGO and as a
freelance journalist. He has worked for the
Independent, Chunichi Shimbun, and Think Africa
Press, and written for openDemocracy, Africa-Asia
Confidential and the Royal African Society, among
others. He holds a master's degree in politics
from the School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London.
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