Rights groups meet with UN rep

Militant groups and human rights victims took the opportunity to air their side on extrajudicial killings before the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) yesterday.

Led by human rights watchdog Karapatan, about 20 relatives of slain activists met with UNHCHR special rapporteur Philip Alston in Manila and told their story of violence.

Karapatan briefed Alston and the UN team on the alleged human rights abuses in the country.

Then the victims started to recount the attacks, some breaking into tears, said Karapatan spokeswoman Ruth Cervantes, who attended the meeting.

Among them was Josie Javier, who was shot with her husband in Cuyapo, Nueva Ecija in October last year by suspected soldiers. Javier worked as coordinator of the militant party-list organization Anakpawis.

"As I think of my husband this Valentine’s Day, I hope that Mr. Alston really listened to our story and will do everything in his power to give us justice," she said in a statement.

Alston has been meeting with military, police, government officials and human rights groups during a 10-day visit starting this week.

The victims sought the meeting with Alston in an effort to urge the UN and other foreign groups to pressure President Arroyo to take drastic steps to halt the killings, Cervantes said.

"The victims have gone to the courts, Congress and the CHR (Commission on Human Rights), but the killings have not stopped," Cervantes said.

Karapatan presented before Alston the latest cases of extrajudicial killings of activists.

The closed-door meeting with the victims came a day after Alston met with top police and military officials who had disputed the figures presented by Karapatan, claiming they were "bloated" and full of discrepancies.

Karapatan has listed 832 summary killings, including 356 left-wing activists, since Mrs. Arroyo took office in 2001. But the government has disputed the figures and blamed many deaths on purges within the 38-year-old communist insurgency.

Karapatan and other left-wing groups have portrayed the killings as part of a government-sanctioned crackdown against activists seeking Mrs. Arroyo’s ouster over vote-rigging and corruption allegations. Officials have denied such allegations.

During the meeting, Karapatan secretary general Marie Hilao-Enriquez explained before Alston the supposed pattern of violence indicating the "state policy behind the killings."

"We told the UN human rights team that a nationwide scope of killings that is being attributed to state security forces can only be a result of a directive from the Philippine government," Enriquez said.

Enriquez added the impending passage of the Anti-Terror bill will worsen the situation, fearing a more sustained and systematic crackdown against militants under the "Oplan Bantay Laya" program of the military aimed at neutralizing the left and militant organizations tagged as fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), on the other hand, reiterated its allegations that the CPP and the communist New People’s Army (NPA) were behind the mass executions that left at least 1,335 people dead since 2000.

The AFP presented its records before Alston, claiming the NPA committed numerous atrocities that killed 499

military and policemen since 2000, on top of the 111 government officials, 75 rebel returnees and 650 civilians who became victims of "instant justice."

Their records showed 336 people were summarily executed by the insurgents for reasons ranging from their resisting extortion activities to being suspected as government spies.

The records also include former guerrillas executed by their former comrades in abandoning the armed struggle.

The AFP reported the CPP-NPA had ordered 12 of its erstwhile leaders and party members executed on mere suspicion of absconding with party funds.

Three of them include former NPA chief Romulo Kintanar, Arturo Tabara, CPP-NPA secretary of the Visayas Commission, and Sotero Llamas, secretary of the NPA’s Bicol Regional Party Committee.

Kintanar was gunned inside a restaurant in Quezon City on Jan. 23, 2003, while Tabara was killed in a parking lot of a shopping mall, also in Quezon City on Sept. 24, the following year.

Last year, Llamas was ambushed by motorcycle riding gunmen while on his way home on May 29 in Barangay Tagas, Tabaco City.

Meanwhile, the Promotion of Church People’s Response (PCPR), a church-based human rights group, appealed to Alston not to rely heavily on the information coming from the government.

PCPR spokesman Fr. Jerry Sabado appealed to Alston to "look, listen and judge beyond" the government’s claims over the issue.

"Mr. Alston must brace himself for more lies and cover-up as he meets with Arroyo’s team," Sabado said.

The PCPR said the UN representative should specifically examine government’s policies on national security "that allow massive vilification, harassment, unjust arrests and summary executions of members of progressive political parties and community activists across the nation."

In a related development, the latest survey of the IBON Foundation Inc. indicated more Filipinos are becoming aware of the issues of political killings.

In the survey conducted last January, 82 percent of the 1,493 respondents said they were aware of the killings of journalists, activists and other civilians critical of the Arroyo administration.

IBON said 56 percent of the respondents believed that the military is behind the killings, while 29 percent believed other armed groups were responsible.

On the other hand, 15 percent said criminal syndicates or vigilante group may be behind the killings. -with Edu Punay, Jaime Laude, AP