Gov’t forces top in human rights violations, says NDFP

By Ronron
June 3, 2005

Almost all complaints for violation of human rights and international humanitarian law that a joint committee of the Philippine government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) received from June 4 last year until today were allegedly done by government forces, the NDFP thus claimed.

NDFP Negotiating Panel chair Luis Jalandoni said in a statement that the Joint Secretariat (JS) of the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the NDFP has received a total of 365 complaints for violation of human rights and international humanitarian law since the JS was opened exactly a year ago today.

The JS served as a physical base for the full operation of the (JMC), which completed the technical and administrative mechanism for the monitoring of the implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).

“There was hope that CARHRIHL would help stem the tide of increasing human rights violations by the Arroyo government, if not, improve the overall human rights situation in the country which remains in an even worse state almost 20 years after the downfall of the Marcos dictatorship,” Jalandoni said.

But he expressed doubts on the government’s sincerity to abide with the CARHRIHL as he noted that 358 of the 365 complaints were filed against the Philippine government, while the remaining seven were with the NDFP.

Jalandoni enumerated the nature of the complaints to be ranging from disappearances to killings, to torture, illegal arrests and detention, to criminalization of political offenses. These also include abuses against women and children.

“The big number of complaints filed with the JS in a short period of one year not only underscores the worsened state of human rights in the country and the urgent need to address these, but also indicates the broad support for the peace negotiations and the strong desire of the people for the ultimate resolution of the root causes of the armed conflict,” said Jalandoni.

Jalandoni lambasted the Philippine government for not abiding with the mandated meeting of the JMC every after three months since it initially convened in April last year as it would have served to be a proper venue to discuss and act on the complaints.

The government, according to him, is reportedly insisting that the formal peace negotiations should first resume before the JMC holds its regular meeting. It can be recalled that the peace process between the NDFP-Communist Party of the Philippines(CPP)-New People’s Army(NPA) and the government bogged down in August last year after the United States listed again the CPP and the NPA in its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

“The GRP and the NDFP signified their will to implement and abide by the Agreement and to carry out, separately through their respective Monitoring Committees or jointly in the JMC, fact-finding investigations of complaints of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law,” Jalandoni reminded the government. The CARHRIHL was signed in March 1998 by both parties.

Jalandoni stressed the NDFP’s commitment to the resolution of the roots of the armed conflict in the Philippines, saying that it even translated the CARHRIHL into various dialects, and engaged in various activities to educate their members all over the country.

“But it (NDFP) will never be pressured or inveigled into capitulation by the GRP through such means as the murder of legal progressive activists, the terrorizing and wholesale killing of civilians and non-combatants, and the unjustified terrorist labeling of the CPP, the NPA and the NDFP chief political consultant Prof. Jose Ma. Sison,” said Jalandoni.

“The government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is hardly in any position to impose preconditions on the NDFP in the peace negotiations,” he added.

Jalandoni, meanwhile, warned that Arroyo that her government “is vulnerable to being toppled by a popular uprising similar to those that brought down former Presidents Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada since it has failed to alleviate the people’s socio-economic condition while callously increasing their tax burden.”

“Arroyo is no different from her corrupt predecessors in wanting to enrich her own family. The NDFP calls on the GRP to heed the people’s demands for social, economic, and political reforms in order to establish a just and lasting peace in the country,” Jalandoni said./DMS