EDITORIAL - Cooperation

Reports said the Chinese-Filipino community is happy about the sustained reduction in kidnapping cases. It took more than a decade for this to happen, and the success can be attributed to several factors. One is political will, which guarantees full support including the logistics and special training needed for law enforcement efforts to eradicate the scourge. Another is the continuing cleansing of law enforcement ranks, to weed out rotten eggs protecting kidnapping rings. A third factor – one that is critical to the success of any anti-crime effort – is public cooperation.

Those three factors must be kept in mind as the nation seeks an end to unexplained killings and forced disappearances mostly of left-wing activists. It’s never enough to condemn and point accusing fingers. Law enforcers, who are the ones tasked to solve murder and kidnapping cases, need leads to go after the perpetrators. Those leads are impossible to get if victims’ families refuse to cooperate with authorities, as police investigators have complained.

The same goes for military officers who insist that slain or missing activists are victims of the latest communist purge. Such claims must be backed by evidence. If the military says activists were killed in legitimate counterinsurgency operations, the circumstances of such operations must be explained to those tasked to investigate complaints of extrajudicial executions.

Militants also have to take greater care in compiling their list of alleged victims of extrajudicial killings. A list presented at the recent two-day summit reportedly included the names of Abu Sayyaf terrorists killed in encounters in Mindanao.

There are rotten eggs in the Philippine National Police, but there are also cops who do justice to their uniform and can be trusted by both militants and the AFP to conduct an impartial investigation.

Police work will be easier if backed by political will. As participants at the summit on extrajudicial killings emphasized, the buck stops at the doorstep of the President and commander-in-chief. She can order the military to cooperate fully with the PNP, and the cops to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation of every complaint about an extrajudicial execution or forced disappearance. But a one-sided investigation cannot yield the truth. Political will must be matched by a degree of trust and cooperation on the part of the victims’ camp.