The U.S. Aids and Abets War Crimes in the
Philippines
By Marjorie Cohn
July 24, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
- After Sept. 11, 2001, President George
W. Bush declared the Philippines a second front in the war on terror
(“Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines”). The Philippine
government used this as an opportunity to escalate its war against
Muslim separatists and other individuals and organizations opposing
the policies of the government. The egregious human rights
violations committed by the Philippine military and paramilitary
forces are some of the most underreported atrocities in the media
today.
The International Peoples’ Tribunal on Crimes Against the Filipino
People, held July 16-18 in Washington, D.C., drew upward of 300
people. An international panel of seven jurors heard two days of
testimony from 32 witnesses, many of whom had been tortured,
arbitrarily detained and forcibly evicted from their land. Some
testified to being present when their loved ones, including
children, were gunned down by the Philippine military or
paramilitary. I testified as an expert witness on international
human rights violations in the Philippines, many of which were aided
and abetted by the U.S. government.
Thirty-one-year-old Melissa Roxas was a community health adviser who
went to the Philippines in 2009 to conduct health surveys in central
Luzon, where people were dying from cholera and diarrhea. In May of
that year, 15 men in civilian clothes with high-powered rifles and
wearing bonnets and ski masks forced her into a van and handcuffed
and blindfolded her. They beat her, suffocated her and used other
forms of torture on her until releasing her six days later. Roxas
was continually interrogated and even threatened with death during
her horrific torture. She was likely released because she is a U.S.
citizen (she has dual citizenship).
But WikiLeaks revealed that although the U.S. Embassy was aware of
Roxas’ torture and abduction, it did nothing to secure her release.
Roxas convinced the Philippines Court of Appeals to grant her
petition for writ of amparo, which confirmed she had been abducted
and tortured. Nevertheless, the Philippine government refuses to
mount an investigation into her ordeal. And although she lives in
the United States, Roxas remains under surveillance.
“Whenever you work with communities,” Roxas testified, “[the
Philippine government] vilifies you as a member of the New Peoples
Army [NPA].” Ironically, the Philippine military claimed it was the
NPA, the armed wing of the Philippine Communist Party, that abducted
Roxas. Her physical and emotional scars remain. But, Roxas told the
tribunal, “I have the privilege of being in the United States,”
unlike many other Filipino victims of human rights violations.
People and groups have been labeled “terrorists” by the Philippine
government, the U.S. government and other countries at the behest of
the U.S. government. The Philippine government engages in “red
tagging”—political vilification. Targets are frequently human rights
activists and advocates, political opponents, community organizers
or groups struggling for national liberation. Those targeted for
assassination are placed on the “order of battle” list.
The tribunal documented 262 cases of extrajudicial killings, 27
cases of forced disappearances, 125 cases of torture, 1,016 cases of
illegal arrest, and 60,155 incidents of forced evacuation—many to
make way for extraction by mining companies—from July 2010 to June
30 of this year by Philippine police, military, paramilitary or
other state agents operating within the chain of command.
As part of the U.S. war on terror, in 2002 the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
government created the Oplan Bantay Laya, a counterinsurgency
program modeled on U.S. strategies, ostensibly to fight communist
guerrillas. After 9/11, the Bush administration gave Arroyo $100
million to fund the campaign in the Philippines.
The government of Benigno Aquino III continued the program in 2011
under the name Oplan Bayanihan. It does not distinguish between
civilians and combatants, which is considered a war crime under the
Rome Statute and the Geneva Conventions.
Oplan Bayanihan has led to tremendous repression, including large
numbers of extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture
and cruel treatment. Many civilians, including children, have been
killed. Hundreds of members of progressive organizations were
murdered by Philippine military and paramilitary death squads.
Communities and leaders opposed to large-scale and invasive mining
have been targeted. Even ordinary people with no political
affiliation have not escaped the government’s campaign of terror.
One witness testified that although the counterinsurgency program
was presented in the guise of “peace and development,” it was really
an “operational guide to crush any resistance by those who work for
social justice and support the poor and oppressed.”
Philippine military and paramilitary forces apparently rationalize
their harsh treatment as necessary to maintain national security
against people and organizations that seek to challenge, or even
overthrow, the government. However, the Convention Against Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT)
says, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of
war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other
public emergency, may be invoked as justification for torture.” Both
the Philippines and the United States are parties to the convention
on torture.
A 14-year-old boy testified that as he was walking with family
members to harvest their crops, “We were fired upon” by soldiers.
“We said, ‘We are children, sir.’ ” But the soldiers killed his
8-year-old brother. “I embraced him. The soldier said we were
enemies. He was bleeding, the bullet exited in the back. He was dead
when my mother saw him. We made an affidavit against the soldiers
but it was dismissed by the prosecutor.”
Raymond Manalo was an eyewitness to kidnapping, torture, rape and
forced disappearances. He testified that he saw civilians burned
alive by soldiers and paramilitary forces. Two women were hit with
wooden sticks and burned with a cigarette. Sticks were inserted into
their genitals. The two women disappeared and have not been seen
since. Although a case was filed, there has been no resolution.
Cynthia Jaramillo testified that her husband, Arnold, was one of
nine unarmed men killed in a massive military operation that lasted
almost a month. Although Arnold was a member of the NPA, “They were
not killed during a legitimate running battle,” she said. “The state
of their bodies when recovered clearly indicated the torture,
willful killing and desecration of the remains.” Arnold was taken
alive and killed at close range by multiple gunshot wounds, his
internal organs lacerated, his jaws and teeth shattered. This
violates the Geneva Conventions and constitutes illegal
extrajudicial killing off the battlefield.
Continuing the Bush policy of the pivot to Asia-Pacific, as a
counterweight to China, President Barack Obama enlisted the Aquino
government last year to negotiate the Enhanced Defense Cooperation
Agreement. While paying lip service to the Philippines’ maintaining
sovereignty over the military bases in their country, it actually
grants tremendous powers to U.S. forces. The United States also
wants to return to its two former military bases at Subic Bay and
Clark, which it left in 1992. Those bases were critical to the U.S.
imperial war in Vietnam. A U.S. return would violate the
well-established right of peoples to self-determination enshrined in
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) includes
a prohibition on aiding and abetting liability for war crimes. An
individual can be convicted of a war crime in the ICC if he or she
“aids, abets or otherwise assists” in the commission or attempted
commission of the crime. This includes “providing the means for its
commission.”
Between 2001 and 2010, the U.S. government furnished more than $507
million in military aid to the Philippine government, enabling it to
commit war crimes. U.S. political and military leaders could be
liable in the ICC for war crimes as aiders and abettors.
The United States planned and helped carry out the botched
Mamasapano raid on January 25, 2015. Dozens died when commandos from
the Special Action Force of the Philippine National Police entered
Mamasapano, where the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front had a
stronghold. The Obama administration had put a $5 million bounty on
terror suspect Marwan’s head. According to the Philippine Daily
Inquirer, US drones identified Marwan’s hiding place, led the
commandos to it, and provided real-time management capacity for the
operation off the battlefield. Marwan was killed but his finger was
severed and disappeared. It then appeared at an FBI lab in the
United States a few days later. DNA tests on the finger confirmed it
was Marwan who had been killed.
Murder, torture and cruel treatment constitute war crimes under the
Rome Statute and the Geneva Conventions. Both the United States and
the Philippines are parties to the Geneva Conventions. But although
the Philippines is a party to the Rome Statute, the United States is
not. In fact, the U.S. government offered the Philippine government
$30 million in additional military aid to secure an agreement that
U.S. soldiers in the Philippines would not be turned over to the
ICC.
The jury in the tribunal found defendant Aquino and defendant
Government of the United States of America, represented by Obama,
guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. “Indeed,” the
panel wrote, “the Prosecution has satisfied the burden of proving
satisfactorily that the Defendants, in concert with each other,
willfully and feloniously committed gross and systematic violations
of Filipino people’s basic human rights.”
The jurors decided, “The killings and disappearances follow a
pattern. The victims are vilified as members of the Communist Party
of the Philippines, and subjected to red tagging ... after
vilification, the victims are subjected to surveillance and then
later killed or abducted.” The panel noted, “These are not random
violations.” They are “not isolated but state-sponsored, part of a
policy deliberately adopted to silence the critics of the
government.” They called it “state terror,” drawing an analogy with
the military and authoritarian regimes in Latin America in the 1970s
and ’80s, which were also supported by the United States.
“Terrorist tagging,” according to the jurors, is not just intended
to define military targets but also to “sabotage the peace process
between the National Democratic Front (NDF) and the Philippine
government.” In fact, Jose Maria Sison, the NDF’s chief political
consultant, has been classified by the United States as a “person
supporting terrorism.” Sison’s assets have been frozen and he is
forbidden to travel, in violation of the ICCPR. The European Union’s
second-highest court ruled to delist Sison as a “person supporting
terrorism” and reversed a decision by member governments to freeze
assets. Yet he remains on the U.S. terrorism list.
Moreover, the jury determined, “the failure of the Philippine
government through Defendant Aquino to identify, investigate and/or
prosecute the perpetrators of these violations is among the
contributing factors to the prevailing impunity in the Philippines.”
The jury urged the defendants to undertake “proper remedial measures
to prevent the commission or continuance of such illegal and
criminal acts, to repair the damages done to the Filipino people and
their environment, compensate the victims and their families for
their atrocities, and to rehabilitate the communities, especially
indigenous communities that have been destroyed by the criminal acts
of the Defendants.”
The panel concluded, “We also encourage the peoples of the world to
seek redress, to pursue justice [under universal jurisdiction], and
to transform this oppressive, exploitative and repressive global
state of affairs exemplified by the experience and plight of the
Filipino people, to challenge the international ‘rule of law,’ and
to construct a global order founded on full respect for the rights
of all peoples, everywhere.”
Marjorie Cohn is a former president of the
National Lawyers Guild and a
professor at Thomas
Jefferson School of Law, where she teaches criminal law and
procedure, evidence, and international human rights law. She
lectures throughout the world on human rights and US foreign policy.
This article was originally published on Truthdig (www.truthdig.com).
|
Click for
Spanish,
German,
Dutch,
Danish,
French,
translation- Note-
Translation may take a
moment to load.
What's your response?
-
Scroll down to add / read comments
Please
read our
Comment Policy
before posting -
It is unacceptable to slander, smear or engage in personal attacks on authors of articles posted on ICH.
Those engaging in that behavior will be banned from the comment section.
|
| |
|
