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Text File | 1994-05-02 | 25KB | 473 lines

<text> <title> Philippines </title> <article> <hdr> Human Rights Watch World Report 1992 Asia Watch: Philippines </hdr> <body> Human Rights Developments The Philippine government's human rights record in 1991 was mixed. According to both the government's Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and nongovernmental human rights groups, violations declined on all fronts. But reports of abuses, including disappearances, extrajudicial killings, incommunicado detention and warrantless arrests, continued. A 1990 law permitting warrantless arrest of suspected subversives continued to be used to arrest suspected members of the rebel New People's Army (NPA), some of whom were held for weeks in solitary confinement and tortured. Government forces were not alone in committing abuses. The NPA, the armed wing of the banned Communist party, continued to kill members of the military, police, other paramilitary forces and civilians in situations outside of combat. As in the past, there were reports of execution-style killings of police and off-duty military officers by rebel hit squads, the so-called "sparrow units," seeking to steal the victim's gun. Typically, a rebel in civilian clothing approached a victim and shot him at close range. Apart from the humanitarian-law violation inherent in targeting people who often were performing no combat function, the disguising of NPA combatants as civilians served to blur the distinction between the two and increased the likelihood of abuse of civilians. On September 28, in Lawaan in eastern Samar province, insurgents were reportedly responsible for a massacre of seven civilians riding in a police car, including the mayor. In October, the NPA in northern Luzon island admitted for the first time in a press statement that it had been holding an American hostage, Arbie Duane Drown, since his disappearance in Cagayan province a year before. Legal and legislative developments in 1991 were for the most part encouraging. The government enacted several reforms reflecting the recommendations of numerous national and international human rights groups, particularly those of the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, which issued its report on the Philippines in January. In June, President Corazon Aquino signed a bill repealing Presidential Decree 1850, an enactment of the martial law era, and concurrently signed into law an act assuring civilian-court jurisdiction over military personnel in cases involving offenses against civilians. The repeal of Presidential Decree 1850 was a major victory for human rights groups in the Philippines, which together with a majority of legislators had been clamoring for its repeal since President Aquino took office in 1986. The decree had given military courts jurisdiction over cases involving all military personnel, including those accused of human rights offenses against civilians. Still, military impunity remained a problem in 1991, even in the most visible cases. In a widely publicized case in February, fifteen soldiers were acquitted of charges of having massacred nineteen civilians in November 1990 in New Passi, Sultan Kudarat, despite eyewitnesses and physical evidence that strongly linked the unit to the massacre. Reports by the government's Commission on Human Rights had strongly implicated the military, and a doctor presented evidence showing that the victims had been shot in the back at point-blank range. As in other cases, eyewitnesses who had submitted signed affidavits failed to come forward at the trial, reportedly because of fears for their own security. The right to be protected against arbitrary arrest remains seriously eroded. Since July 1990, the Supreme Court has permitted warrantless arrest not only of rebels but also of those suspected of being Communist Party members, on the grounds that membership in a banned organization may be considered a "continuing crime." Numerous reports suggest that the military has used the court's ruling to arrest suspects in the absence of strong prima facie cases against them. Arrests reportedly often followed by incommunicado detention, during which forcible attempts are made to extract confessions. Philippine human rights groups assert that the incidence of warrantless arrests has risen since the decision, and that the military also routinely plants weapons on suspects to legitimize otherwise weak cases of alleged subversion. In one instance on August 21, Roberto Roldan, a freelance filmmaker and Marcos-era detainee, was arrested without a warrant while reportedly shopping at a mall in Quezon City. Roldan said that the military held him incommunicado for a week and forced him to make a confession at gunpoint. Only after a delay of two weeks was he officially charged with subversion and possession of a firearm, which he claimed had been planted. He remained in custody at the end of the year. There were continuing reports of disappearances in 1991. In several cases, witnesses identified the abductors as members of the military, the police or Civilian Armed Forces-Geographical Units (CAFGU), the official paramilitary organization. In one case, a member of a militant peasant's organization disappeared after he was taken into police custody. Local human rights organizations said he had been arrested because of his activities as a farmers' organizer. Amnesty International (AI) reported that Renato Tabasa Zabate was abducted by a group of armed men on September 8 and was still missing at the end of the year. In 1990, members of Zabate's organization, the United Farmers Organization, were reportedly subjected to harassment by military forces for being suspected supporters of the New People's Army. AI believed that Zabate, whom military agents had detained once before in an unofficial "safehouse" in 1987, was still being held at the Cebu Metropolitan District Command Headquarters of the Philippine National Police, at Camp Sotero in Cebu City. Extrajudicial killings by government forces continued in 1991. As in the past, most of the victims were peasants, poor urban squatters and labor-union activists, in Negros Occidental, Cebu and Mindanao. A June report by the International Federation of Human Rights described several such killings. In one, in Negros Occidental province in February, Enrico Perolino, a farmworker who had fled military operations in his rural village, was reportedly dragged out of an evacuation center in Bacolod and shot dead in full view of his son. The perpetrator, a CAFGU member, was identified by name by the son. The alleged murderer has not been discharged, although an investigation has been initiated by the CHR. Individuals with outspoken political views were also victims of targeted killings. In January, according to Amnesty International, two armed men in Negros Occidental province assassinated Father Narciso Pico, a parish priest of the Philippine Independent Church who was well known for his advocacy of human rights and land reform. Before his death, Father Pico had been repeatedly warned that the military had targeted him as a suspected communist sympathizer. Information collected by local and international monitors pointed to CAFGU members or members of an unofficial paramilitary group as the perpetrators. For the first time under the Aquino government, local human rights and environmental organizations reported that environmental activists were becoming targets of military abuse. Henry Domoldol, chair of a community association pressing to keep forests under tribal management, was shot dead on July 26, as he was coming out of his home in Kopis, a village in the town of Conner in the northern province of Kalinga-Apayao. Witnesses, including two of his sons, identified the gunmen as members of the Philippine Army and CAFGU. In another case, a priest who had been active in promoting