THE FILIPINO MIND: anticommunism

Showing posts with label anticommunism. Show all posts

Monday, August 25, 2008

THE MYTHS WE LIVE BY (1965) - Senator Lorenzo Tanada

Young people...... Do not be old before your time, dare to blaze new paths and take your countrymen with you to those heights of freedom and independence which our generation dreamt of but failed to reach. - Senator Tanada

"There is not a nationalistic movement here that has not received its share of witch-hunting diatribes. The danger is that if these attempts to regain full independence are equated with communism and branded as subversive, the right of protest and dissent essential to this movement may be imperiled or curtailed.- Lorenzo Tanada

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PLEASE DONATE CORE SUBJECT BOOKS TO OUR HOMELAND (i.e. your hometown public schools, Alma Mater, etc.). Those books that you and/or your children do not need or want; or buy books from your local library during its cheap Book Sales. Also, cargo/door-to-door shipment is best. It is a small sacrifice. [clean up your closets or garage - donate books.THANKS!]

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" Fear history, for it respects no secrets" - Gregoria de Jesus (widow of Andres Bonifacio)

The following previous posts and the RECTO READER are essential about us native, Malay Filipinos and are therefore always presented in each new post. Click each to open/read

OUR FILIPINO CULTURE:

OUR PHILIPPINE ECONOMY and MILITARY: (Post-WW2 Agreements)

THE RECTO READER (Book) is presented in several postings. Click each to open/read:

NOTE: Recto's cited cases, examples or issues were of his time, of course; but realities in our homeland in the present and the foreseeable future are/expectedly much, much worse. Though I am tempted to update them with current issues, it's best to leave them as they are since Recto's paradigms about our much deepened national predicament still ring relevant, valid and true. In short, Recto saw the forest and never got lost in the trees.- Bert

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[The following excerpts came from a Commencement Address delivered by the late Senator Lorenzo Tanada at the Lyceum of the Philippines on May 7, 1965. Senator Tanada is a sincere nationalist whose battles, before and after the death of the great Sen. Claro M. Recto, show his uncompromising patriotism. he fought on the floor of the Senate and outside of it to preserve the sanctity of the Constitution and the patrimony of the people which some Filipinos with a bent mind wanted sold for a few pieces of silver to foreigners - Teodoro A. Agoncillo]

The Myths We Live By (1965)
- Senator Lorenzo Tanada
THE FOLKLORE OF COLONIALISM

We have been living by illusions for such a long time that we seem not to have noticed the changing realities of our time. We belong to neither the advanced capitalist countries nor socialist camps. Our thinking and behavior, however, belie our real status - that we are a developing nation.

Our habit of self-delusion has been a principal cause of our miseries. Many countries like our own have heroically resisted the excursions of metropolitan powers.Some have succeeded, while others are still fighting the pernicious hold of foreign interests. This determined struggle on their part has earned for them the respect of the nations of the world.

Because we have refused to recognize our real status, we have not only resisted, we have even abetted foreign economic domination. We have been deluded into thinking that this is the correct road, because we are so anxious to establish affinity with an advanced power and because we believe any other road is unwise.

We have been on this road for such a long time, yet we have not progressed. from this mistaken orientation have sprung all the myths that imprison us. We have lived on rhetoric and ignored reality. We pride ourselves so much on being the most westernized country in Asia that we actually sometimes tend to look down upon our fellow Asians.

We have professed to have some links with our brother Asians but we tend to look condescendingly on them because they do not speak English the way we do and have not adopted western ways. This is the first of the myths we live by.

The Myth of the "Free World."

We like to believe that we belong to the free world and we find it difficult to accept that the political life of a nation can be different from ours and still not be evil: that a people's economic, political and cultural life is determined by its own needs and that one cannot just impose a particular way of life upon a nation, for each nation has its own peculiarities.

A nation that does not have the same form of government and philosophy as ours is not necessarily undemocratic. Democracy admits a diversity of forms, it can be diverse as the number of nation-states.

We have relinquished the sovereign initiative that belongs to an independent state by following America too closely. We rely almost entirely on western, especially American experts for opinion and judgment and we have not developed our own powers of assessment.

We are enamored of enchanting phrases like "free world," "free enterprise," etc. and we are easily swayed by stirring calls to the defense and protection of "freedom and democracy."

Do we read the news and comments of other countries, even those which are generally considered as part of the free world but which think independently of the United States? Very few of us do.

Instead we are content to allow only the experts of American news agencies to fill the columns of our papers with their own not disinterested view of world events; we are satisfied to see our young people get their intellectual nourishment almost exclusively from American comics and magazines, American TV programs and movies from Hollywood.

We have not been discriminating at all in our choice of intellectual fare. Consequently, we have not learned to be original.

The Myth of Identity of Interests.

In the field of foreign relations, we have always proceeded on the assumption that America's interests are automatically ours and vice-versa. we have followed her foreign policy closely and sometimes we have even outdone her.

In Asia, our stock is low because we are regarded by our neighbors as America's obedient satellite.

We are thus viewed with suspicion by fellow Asians. In international conferences, we have always identified with the American position. We have not recognized the communist countries not because we have studied this question ourselves and decided it would be bad for us but because, we believed that by recognition we would be hurting America's cause, even if America itself has diplomatic, economic and cultural relations with most of them.

Thus we find our diplomatic maneuverability severely limited. We can not trade with these countries, while many of the developing nations of Asia and Africa have found it profitable to do so.

Ever since the restoration of our independence, we have ignored the existence of the Soviet union. The policy of non-recognition has grown out of a suspicion of communist intentions, out of a desire to please America and not out of any serious analysis of the objective situation.

Hence, we have failed to develop our own experts on Soviet Union. We have refused to seriously consider the position of the Soviet union in world events, even after her amazing accomplishments in the realm of science and space.

From the inception of our independent life, Liberal and Nacionalista administrations have been guided by the myth of identity of interests into actions and policies that later proved detrimental to our country.

We have subordinated even domestic policy to the demands of foreign policy based on this myth that our interests are identical to those of the United States. But a cardinal principle of independent existence is that the foreign policy of a state should merely be a reflection of its domestic policy.

Domestic policy is paramount and foreign policy is subordinate, or ought to be, to that policy. domestic policy is based on our own needs and aspirations, not the needs, let alone aspirations, of our allies. Foreign policy must hence be a distinctly Filipino response to the world as we see it and not as others with their own biases and interests see it.

Because it is only under an atmosphere of reduced tensions that we can carry on the building of our nation, the national interest would seem to require a foreign policy based on peaceful coexistence with all nations. But our foreign policy has in fact been just a bit more warlike than that as witness the proposal to send combat engineers to Vietnam.

The Myth of American Benevolence

This is the myth of special relations. For so many years we have been acting as if we were special favorites of America. we feel especially privileged because we have "special relations" with America and America has a special place for us in her heart. Yet, this is not so; I even wonder if it has been so. let us remind ourselves of the bitter start of the American intrusion into our shores.

Even then of course, words of great emotional appeal were used to disguise the truth. America had a "manifest destiny" to "civilize" us and teach us the ways of freedom and democracy. Later developments suggest that this was not so, that America had ambitions to, in Asia, still has them, and that the Philippines was conquered by her to serve her own interests, certainly not those of our country.

Similarly, America's attitude towards Philippine independence followed the dictates of her own self-interest. her recognition of our independence became possible only as a result of the confluence of forces in America and these included the dairy industries, the sugar interests, American labor, etc., which wanted to deprive us of our preferred position in the American market because we were competing with their own interests.

Self-interest beyond everything also dictated American withdrawal from the Philippines during the last war. The so-called "special relations" were weighted in her favor. When she returned after the war and gave us back the independence we had won from Spain and which she took from us by force and guile, what did "special relations" mean for us? parity? Laurel-Langley [agreement], and bases agreement imposing extraterritorial rights for her.

Parity was imposed in exchange for war damage payments. Free trade was moreover guaranteed for a definite period. What did those signify? The perpetuation of our colonial-type economy and the stifling relations with America are being invoked to give Americans more rights than Filipinos themselves in the case of retail trade nationalizations and to demand the continuation of rights acquired under parity after 1974.

Under parity, we have alienated huge tracts of our national patrimony to American corporations. Under parity, we have imported billions of pesos worth of duty-free American goods and exported to the united States less than a third in value of our export commodities. the influx of American goods prevented industrialization.

Professor George Taylor has observed: " it has to be admitted that the U.S. set up for its citizens monopolistic advantages. Through the American Chamber of Commerce and through the American Embassy, the Americans can bring pressure to bear on a weak government and in some instances, this pressure may well make it more difficult for that government to carry out its own reform."

The Myth of Foreign Investments

I hold no brief against foreign investments as long as those investments are reasonably controlled and made to serve our national interests. No Filipino who genuinely loves his country can be for foreign investments that would ultimately hand over the control of our economic life to foreigners. Loans are therefore to be preferred to direct investments for in the former case we remain in control of our resources and there is less danger of foreign influence on our policies.

We should be on guard against a policy on foreign investments that has no well-defined safeguards. the urgent nee for vigilance in this respect becomes obvious when we observe what has been happening here. foreign investors have entered fields that can be run and in many cases have already been pioneered by Filipinos.

There have been far too many cases of foreigners with superior resources edging out Filipinos who have long been in business. On the other hand, many foreign investors have merely set up industries that process already finished goods in order to circumvent our tariff laws. Some unwholesome results are:an excessive production of consumption goods, gasoline companies thriving happily in a country that has not utilized our pharmacological preparations because they prefer to import their own preparations into the country.

More often than not, too, our banks provide these foreign investors with the capital they need. And then the latter remit their profits without limit thus drawing out of the country the fruit of resources and human energies that could otherwise be utilized for further development and investment.

Thus the president of a huge American farm implement manufacturing company (USI) has actually boasted that "for every dollar that we have sent out of the United States for any purpose in the past five years we have brought back $4.67."

The Institute of Economic Studies and Social Action of the Araneta University has made a check of the financial statement of the local subsidiary of this firm and discovered that insofar at least as its Philippine subsidiary is concerned the boast was no idle one but a simple statement of fact. the domestic subsidiary was moreover a heavy borrower from the local banking system besides being a heavy remitter of earnings.

This is by no means an isolated case. The Araneta University study on the borrowing and remittances of aliens and foreign companies reveals that at almost every phase and level of the economy, from petroleum to advertising, foreign business is behaving more or less in the same manner as the company I have cited as an example.

This means that in effect we are not importing capital through these so-called foreign investments but actually exporting it for the profits derived from our own resources are remitted abroad by our own banks.

According to former NEC Chairman Henares, $19,000,000 came in as foreign investments and over $200,000,000 were remitted as profit. he has further revealed that excluding Chinese investments, foreign investments constituted only 2% of total investments and yet these 2% were able to remit millions of dollars, an ironic case of the poor subsidizing the rich.

Yet the loss of dollars, the siphoning out of our resources is only one part of the harm our foreign investments policy does to our people. just as pernicious is the fact that by opening credit facilities to foreigners we have starved our own businesses of capital which alone can give them a fighting chance to survive competition from the giant companies of America.

According to the Araneta Institute of Economic Studies, P1.3 billions in credit were made available to aliens in 1964. How many Filipino businesses could have been established or expanded if this tremendous sum had not gone to alien borrowers!

Moreover, with this capital in Filipino hands, there would not be any problem later on of foreign remittances. Instead, profits would be reinvested or at least spent right here resulting in continued economic benefit for the Filipino people.

Because we appear and are so eager for foreign investments, strategic industries in the filed of communications, chemicals, rubber and petroleum have fallen into the hands of foreign companies. What would happen to us if these companies were to refuse to cooperate with us during periods of emergency?

Would the United States for example allow a foreign to monopolize her communications facilities such as the telephone? Never, but the Philippines does and justifies the action on the plea that we must not scare away foreign capital.

When the term foreign investment is brought up, the public envision an avalanche of dollars which will transform this country into a paradise on earth. For this, they may seem willing to revise our laws, compromise our independence, barter our national dignity. But if foreign companies only take advantage of our credit facilities, borrow capital from Filipino banks whose funds are composed of the savings of Filipinos and then remit their profits, thus siphoning out our wealth, have we really gained much?

If these savings can be harnessed instead, if we could get foreign loans without strings, and at low interests as India has from Russia, if we were at the same time willing to make some sacrifice by reducing the consumption of imported goods, we could attain significant economic progress. This will hardly happen, however, as long as we cling to the myth of untold benefits from foreign investments.

As long as our leaders continue to believe that we can not progress without foreign investments, we shall always be subject to the heavy imposition of foreign investors, we shall never put up adequate safeguards for Filipino businessmen and ultimately for our people.

In the fight for economic freedom, the Filipino entrepreneur has begun to make his voice heard. Many entrepreneurs have come to realize that their own economic status is tied up with the demands of progressive groups from freedom form foreign economic dictation and control.

As a class, they must realize that they have a choice to make --either to adapt themselves to the demands of foreign interests and thus be regarded by the people as accomplices in their exploitation, or to resist the easy way and insist on remaining their own masters. If we have chosen the capitalist way of development, then let it be Filipino capitalism.

But our entrepreneurs must also realize the masses can no longer tolerate further exploitation. They must therefore see their development in the light of a new approach where all sectors under joint leadership attain an economy of abundance without the present mal-distribution of goods which has resulted in poverty for the many.

If our entrepreneurs are really sincere in their nationalistic aspirations, then they should act an example of austerity. Our middle class professionals and intellectuals should do likewise and help to do away with present consumption habits which have been causing tremendous drainage of our foreign reserves.

The people can not for long continue to suffer poverty and hunger. A time will come when they will move to help themselves and unless the entrepreneurs and the intellectuals are with them they may succumb to the leadership of other forces.

The Myth of Free Enterprise

The road to progress cannot be clear unless we shed another myth that dominates the thinking of our planners; that economic growth automatically means development and that development inevitably results in "democratizing" wealth through its equitable distribution. Surely each administration can show facts and figures attesting to the growth of the national product.

But growth does not mean development. Nor does it mean that the poor will get a fuller meal or better homes or more adequate clothing or greater opportunity for education. When we talk of growth we should also talk of equitable distribution of the wealth of the land so that those who have been living for centuries under conditions of poverty will get their just rewards, so that those who work the land will not forever suffer from rural penury.

Tied up with the myth is the belief that democracy is synonymous with free enterprise. Complete free enterprise is not good for developing countries. Government in these countries have to have some say in directing the development of their economies.; otherwise domestic businesses could not compete in equal terms with foreign giants.

Government direction for nationalistic purposes does not diminish our democracy for after all an essential goal of democracy is freedom from want.

Thus we can not simply proceed with industrialization without revising our agricultural structure. Our entrepreneurs must realize that nationalism is not only for the benefit of a few Filipinos.

Nationalism does not merely mean more profits for the few. Independence under democracy must have a meaning for all sectors of the population, not just one.

To the masses it should mean higher standard of living, to the laborers, an assurance of employment at reasonable wages, to professionals, the attainment of proficiency in their respective lines of endeavor, to artists and intellectuals, the realization of creative talents.

Once freed of the myths that imprison our minds, we shall clearly see that it involves challenging many concepts and ideas, institutions and people and all the beneficiaries of the status quo.

The Tasks Ahead

But we must also bear in mind that this struggle is intimately tied up with the question of civil liberties. We can keep up the effort only while we have these liberties and there will surely be attempts to suppress this weapon of the people on the part of those who stand to lose privileged positions.

Even now, our demands against unequal treatment of employees in foreign firms, our demonstrations against abuses in the bases and our military participation in the war in Vietnam have been labeled as red. There is not a nationalistic movement here that has not received its share of witch-hunting diatribes.

The danger is that if these attempts to regain full independence are equated with communism and branded as subversive, the right of protest and dissent essential to this movement may be imperiled or curtailed.

Nationalism at this stage of our history, because of the myths I have alluded to, is essentially a movement of protest. there is in effect a wave of protest now seeping the world, a protest against inequality, a protest of the desperate poor against the deeply entrenched rich nations of the world.

We belong to this movement because whether we like it or not, we are poor, we are a developing nation. It must seem strange therefore to the rest of the world why in this legitimate cry for international social justice, we have not only joined our voice but far too often than not seem to speak out for the status quo, for the rich nations.

Sooner or later, however, we shall have to confront this contradiction, have to come to a confrontation even with the United States in some area of our national life because the United States is now very much present in most phases of our life.

We shall question the privileges she enjoys but which adversely affect our economy. We may and shall support her in all endeavors where there is mutuality of advantage, but in dealing with her we shall constantly bear in mind our own welfare.

Towards other countries who aspire like us for an independent existence, we must show sympathy and understanding, even should they follow forms of government different from our own. Not all countries can have the same government as ours. people are different. Their methods of governing themselves will inevitably be differ.

In any case it is of the essence of democracy that there be diversity. it is also of essence of democracy that we tolerate ideas and practices even though they may not be the same as ours. each people has its own needs and idiosyncrasies. They can not be expected to be or act in every aspect like ourselves. There are many political philosophies and systems.

As true democrats we must respect them. we may try to challenge the practical validity of these systems by example, but never by force of arms. Co-existence -this is the international reflection of democracy. We must not think that a people have adopted other means to achieve progress, they are not free.

Freedom is a many-faceted goal and every nation works towards it in its own way. Even the United States is still in the process of attaining greater freedom by solving her civil rights problem --the protection of her minorities. But in the developing nations, the first concern of people is livelihood and food.

The substance of democracy in these nations right now is economic freedom., freedom from want. The other freedoms will follow therefrom. We are enjoying civil liberties because of a tradition which America helped to establish but we are still a long way from attaining freedom from want. Other nations are attacking the problem the other way around. And I am sure that the "democratizing" forces can work more easily after they have won their economic freedom.

Our task then today is to escape the captivity in which we have imprisoned ourselves. The weight of centuries of colonialism has made us lethargic. Let us therefore re-examine our position. let us think for ourselves. We are not only building a nation; we are also reconstructing a people who for a long time have lived in a kind of fool's paradise.

Let us confront real problems, not what are presented to us as problems. Let us solve them as we see fit for ourselves and not as others want us to solve them according to their own pattern of thought. Let us discard the old myths and attune ourselves to reality.

This is the essence of independence. This is the substance of democracy. The magnitude of the task before us may stagger the imagination of my own generation. But it should be a challenge to you.

Young people do not by nature cling to the past; they embrace the future. They can see further, they can work harder, they should achieve more. Do not be old before your time, dare to blaze new paths and take your countrymen with you to those heights of freedom and independence which our generation dreamt of but failed to reach.

Source: Extracted from the book "HISTORY OF THE FILIPINO PEOPLE"
- Teodoro A. Agoncillo & Oscar A. Alfonso, Malaya Books (revised edition, 1967)

"No people can be both ignorant and free." - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

“The true Filipino is a decolonized Filipino.” – Prof. Renato Constantino (1919-1999)

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FILIPINO NATIONALISM -is the bottom line;sine-qua-non for the common good of the native (Malay/Indio)Filipino majority. Nationalism must precede any plan/action in dealing with globalization. EDUCATION- being educated is beyond just being schooled towards a profession or practical vocation; we need the Humanities/liberal arts to develop/apply CRITICAL ANALYSIS/THINKING to understand, identify, plan, act & safeguard the needed fundamental and/or systemic changes towards economic/political progress, social justice, and social transformation. GOVERNMENT - its raison d'etre is to lead/serve the native majority, foster nationalism via its institutions, ensure the masses are critically literate to have real democracy. FREEDOM & DISSENT - free thought is necessarily aggressive and critical; we protect the freedom to discover truth; we encourage dissent, not for sentimental reasons, but because we cannot live without it. PATRIOTISM is NOT: " My country, right or wrong;" but " if right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right!" RELIGION/BELIEFS: No Deus ex Machina. No established religion. Humanism/Existentialism.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Necessarily A Bloody Revolution: Why, What and When

(NOTE: Underlined words are HTML links, click to open)

"Those who profess to favor freedom
and yet deprecate agitation
are men who want crops without plowing up the ground;
they want rain without thunder and
lightning.
They want the ocean without the
awful roar of its waters.
This struggle may be a moral one
or it may be a physical one
or it may be both moral and physical
but it must be a struggle.
Power concedes nothing without a
demand
It never did, and never will."
- - Frederick Douglass, Abolitionist, Author, Slave (1817-1895)
(from Fr. Pedro V. Salgado, O.P.,The Philippine Economy: History and Analysis, 1985)

"If the people are not completely free and happy, the fault will be entirely their own." - George Washington, shortly after the end of the American Revolution

WHAT WE FILIPINOS SHOULD KNOW: Ever-worsening poverty. All politics, no statesmanship. Systemic corruption. Lack of Discipline. Education. Desperation. Frustration. Anger. Apathy/Indifference. Social cancer. American domination. Chinese domination. Japanese domination. Korean excursion. All foreign dominations. Escapist religion. State-sponsored terrorism: military and paramilitary. Possible, but Improbable reform. People Power. Charter Change. Parliamentary System. Coup d'etat. Transitory council/government. Bloodless revolution. Bloody revolution.

(See: http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/12/charter-change-nationalism-and.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/07/charter-change-gats-and-presidential.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/05/filipinos-in-cage-in-pursuit-to.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/11/religion-and-philippine-society.html)

For almost 60 years, all these talks, all these realities. Shall we, once and for all, have a real revolution, to finish the unfinished revolution?

This train of thoughts going through my mind while walking my dog! Bloody revolution. If we should ever have one, a bloody but "productive" revolution (not just a waste of lives, especially of innocent ones), we first need to have the social consciousness of a significant number of native Malay Filipinos, if not their majority, raised to understand "what is going on" and the "why" the need for a revolution. It would be ideal if their understanding would create a political pressure on the so-called leaders to change and work for the common good. Obviating the need for a revolution. How long will it take for the common people to reach that understanding, with the powers-that-be working hard to prevent it?

A peaceful, bloodless revolution may be possible, but improbable in our homeland. And historical realities have demonstrated its unreality. The history of nations, though NOT to be taken as absolute and deterministic, has shown time and again that fundamental changes or radical social transformations necessitate a bloody revolution. And as we have repeatedly witnessed in our homeland, needed fundamental changes are not allowed to occur; thus the opportunity for desired, true and radical changes in the homeland, seemingly and inevitably, can be offered only by a bloody revolution.

A bloody revolution for the simple reason that the powers-that-be, the native rulers and their foreign masters, have/will neither change nor shy away from the abuse they impose on the majority. A bloody revolution because we expect the powers-that-be who profit from the status quo will surely be violent and unreasonable when their selfish interests, their possessions/properties including those they unfairly and/or illegally obtained, are questioned. Appeals to their sense of social morality, human decency and reason are ignored, muted and dealt with deceitful legalities and outright use of violence.

Let us remind ourselves that the powerful has been and is already doing direct and indirect violence. Direct violence is done by their use of the military and paramilitary forces to harass, torture and murder or assassinate dissenters; indirect violence is being committed by depriving the already impoverished of the means of livelihood and adequate social services such as health care, food and shelter, and education.

The bloody revolution will NOT be communist, which reduces everything to a class conflict. It will NOT be a communist revolution because communism, though to some degree a great ideology, does not and did not work for the majority, as recent world history has shown. Communism in Russia and its satellites, in the long run only created a new and exclusive, ruling class -its Party members- to replace the aristocracy of the defeated regimes. A "dictatorship of the proletariat" does not work and did not work (World communism is dead, but communist analysis is still largely valid and relevant to our homeland).

I believe that communism has served, in some nations, as a useful stage to socialism, not vice versa. Let us remember that socialism is NOT communism. Note the Scandinavian countries.
(see: http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/12/terrorism-communism-capitalism.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/09/socialism-real-and-fake-noam-chomsky.html

The bloody revolution will NOT be an anticommunist revolution. The bloody revolution will not be anticommunist, which simplifies everything to a communist versus anticommunist conflict. Because anticommunism in our homeland only maintains the status quo of exploitation, of greed and of selling out to foreigners based on purely selfish interests that brought the ever-worsening impoverishment. Of selling out our national patrimony and mortgaging the future of the next generations. Of paying lip service to democratic dissent. Of labeling dissenters as "communists," "terrorists," "leftists," etc. thus rationalizing the "neutralization" aka torture to assassination/"salvaging" of those labeled and elimination of rational discussions of society's ills.
(see: http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/08/state-as-terrorist-dynamics-of.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/05/corruption-and-good-governance-by.html)

The bloody revolution will and HAS to be nationalist. A nationalist revolution for the common good of the majority of native Filipinos-in-the Philippines.It will be a nationalist revolution, first and foremost. It has to be led by a truly nationalistic leadership, who will be identified and validated by an informed, nationalistic and thus unified majority. Its leadership will be a collection of nationalistic citizens from all the social classes in society; but mostly from the middle and lower classes; given that the upper class mainly profit from the status quo. It will also have the majority vigilant and ready to reject anyone desirous of any "personality cult," among them.
(see: http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/05/what-is-filipino-nationalism-mrs.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/05/what-nationalism-good-article-by.html)

It will be a nationalist revolution because only nationalism is the sentiment, call it ideology, that calls for loving one's country. It is the only force that can destroy our being a "a nation of strangers", and create in its place a truly, united Filipino community, a true Filipino nation-state. It can and will minimize, if not eliminate, many of our notorious corruption, etc.when nationalism is appreciated by the many.

Filipino nationalism will be the force for anti-neocolonialism (globalization - mainly economic and cultural; this latter which reinforces the first), for economic and political sovereignty, that is, true economic and political independence, for national fraternity/identity and national pride, all within our borders. A Filipino nationalism will provide the unity of decision and action for the common good, i.e. the social justice for and dignity of the native, Malay Filipino majority.
(see: http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/12/do-filipino-nationalists-use-blame.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/11/power-of-nationalism-and-american.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/08/finishing-unfinished-revolution-in.html,

Specifically, the nationalist revolution will be vigilant to safeguard its nationalist endeavors. It will hasten and pursue the nationalist education of the native majority, its young and old. It will protect its nationalist endeavors by building a nationalistic armed forces. It will rebuild its agriculture by implementing true land reform, providing instructions and implements for productive farming. It will support and provide protection for native industries geared for self-sufficiency and limiting imports to essential commodities. It will therefore put export as secondary. It will refuse to pay for odious debts and negotiate firmly for a moratorium and/or a rescheduling of foreign debt payments. As a last resort, with the support of a nationalistic majority, it will default on its debts. It will discard/dismantle the neocolonial economic and military agreements that the past and present regimes have agreed to. It will support mass education, educate and train for more health providers to reach the impoverished.

A nationalist revolution will seek to form a "new" Filipino: a Filipino nationalist to fight for its next generation(s). It will seek to vanish the destructive habits and way of thinking, such as colonial mentality or damaged culture, that were products of "cultural imperialism." It will seek, identify and teach the good habits of thought and behavior that our forefathers have, including the good from other Asians and other nationalities. It will seek to make a mature Filipino, having a national identity and appreciating that he belongs to a community beyond his family and relatives, which only nationalism provides. It will seek to make him grow up as a person, devoid of myths and superstitions that militate against personal and social responsibility. It will safeguard its native heritage of the Malay Filipino race since we have to be homogenuos first before we allow foreigners (who are much stronger than us now and have been and are coming to our homeland expectedly for their own alien/foreign interests despite claims of otherwise,i.e. fairness, altruism,etc.)

It is only through a nationalist revolution that we Filipinos will then be able to stand on our own as a nation, with earned respect, with national pride and national dignity, and to be able to deal with other nations in mutual respect. It is only then that we can be truly responsible, be able to go into negotiations with other peoples and nations, with eyes wide open, confident that we will not be fooled this time and at ensure that, at the very least, be treated fairly.

Lastly, lest we become romantic. A nationalist revolution is not welcomed especially by today's developed world including America, now effectively controlled by its transnational corporations; and for some time now very different from the America of Adam Smith. America, the icon for capitalism, can deal and do business with communists, as it does now with former communist enemies Vietnam and China.

America today is more vehemently opposed to the nationalisms of the developing or Third World countries as any of these nationalisms will put into question the highly advantageous, neocolonial arrangements America got; and therefore it will surely work against any nationalist attempt: whether through peaceful or violent means. See what America has been doing or done to all nationalist attempts to gain sovereignty; Iran (950s), Cuba and the Dominican Republic (1960s), Guatemala (1970s), Granada (1980s), Nicaragua (1990s), ad nauseam ; fast forward now in the 21st century to again Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, etc. All facts easily obtained by a serious student of United States foreign policy.

Please see: http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/12/terrorism-communism-capitalism.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/11/power-of-nationalism-and-american.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/12/fidel-castro-moncada-50-years-later.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/12/persistently-damaged-culture-by.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/11/multinational-corporations-corrupt.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/11/on-failed-coup-hugo-chavez-president.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/11/understanding-venezuelan-revolution.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/11/global-bully-goes-to-guatemala-russell.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/08/neoliberalism-and-global-order-noam.html

"The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain" - Thomas Jefferson, 1809

“Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent” – Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister (1804-1881)

“The first priority for any underdeveloped country, before it can begin the economic and social development most appropriate to the needs of its people, is the seizure of power by the masses and the total destruction of the control and influence of the foreign power and local exploiting elite. Without this, nothing is possible.” – Felix Green, British Author, 1970

Bert M. Drona

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Extrajudicial Violence: Killing Season in our Homeland

Killing season in the Philippines
FOCUS ON THE GLOBAL SOUTH - Herbert Docena

" I helped the poor and they called me a saint, I asked why they were poor and they called me a Communist’ – Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian Bishop (1909-1999)
"Education provides you with concepts of good and bad. Training produces robots." - Argentine Col. Luis Perlinger.

WHAT WE FILIPINOS SHOULD KNOW: (Note: Bold and/or underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked posting/article. Forwarding the postings to relatives and friends, especially in the homeland, is greatly appreciated).

As mentioned in the below article, Philippine media oftentimes carry news about violence supposedly committed only by the "enemy," which is either the NPA or MILF. On the other hand, there seems to a dearth on media reporting about state violence aka "state terrorism" as has been happening in our homeland since the Marcos Dictatorship (1972-1986) through his successors: Cory Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada and now, Gloria Arroyo.

With the so-called "War on Terrorism" pronounced by US president George W. Bush, our present ruling regime has followed suit --toeing the American line, as our homeland's rulers historically and predictably always do, given the promised American Military Aid, by putting forth the homeland's domestic and foreign policy agenda that consistently indicate their usual/perennial subservience to our former colonizer, regardless as to how our own people suffer thereafter.
Violence in our homeland has become significant and very political: it is planned and deliberately carried out against members of other groups that are labeled randomly and even interchangeably as the: "left," "communists," and/or "terrorists." Violence in the homeland has victimized so many ordinary people who just were trying to assert their human and citizen rights in our supposedly democratic society.
It makes us wonder how we have allowed cruelty, torture, kidnapping, disappearances, outright assassinations and murders to occur. It makes us wonder how, in our so-called only Christian country in Asia, we have people who either perform these killings and atrocities on primarily simple folks. It makes us wonder that in all probability, these executioners who can laugh and joke about what they do, come home to their family and children and even be nice to them, to their friends and relatives; and lead normal lives as we know it and sleep well. It makes us wonder how, in addition to our ever-deepening economic hole, we now have regressed so much in violence as to be comparable to the violence that permeated much of Latin America in the 1970s-1980s, such as the US-supported military junta/dictatorship in Argentina (or El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru,etc.).
Argentina's Gen. Iberico Saint Jean who then became governor of Buenos Aires said: "First we must kill all the subversives, then their symphatizers, then those who are indifferent; and finally, we must kill all those who are timid." Interesting to note that several Latin American dictators were U.S.-trained: Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Panama's>General Manuel Noriega, Argentina's Admiral Emilio Massera to name a few (see a list of friendly dictators).
Where did all that Christian religion and morality go? How come our Christianity failed? And why has our church hierarchy practically kept silent? Does the hierarchy see the "masa" as plain "troublemakers" and therefore deservingly had it coming?
In Argentina, the Catholic Church endorsed state terrorism when it encouraged the military's conviction that dissenters and activists, etc. were subversives; by colluding and saying that fighting leftists was the Lord's work. Note that out of 80+ Argentine bishops, only four spoke out against the repression and one of them, Bishop Enrique Angelelli was murdered in what was proved to be a staged car accident.
Cardinal Juan Carlos Aramburu in 1982 said: "Disappeared? Things should not be mixed up. Do you know that there are some "disappeared persons who today are living quite contentedly in Europe?" Or from Bishop Carlos Mariano Perez of Salta:"The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo must be eliminated." (referring to the mothers of the disappeared). In 1985 after the junta crumbled, Archbishop Antonio Plaza of La Plata said: "The trials of the junta are "revenge by subversive forces and garbage...[They are Nuremberg in reverse, in which the criminals are judging those who defeated terrorism]."
Hopefully the majority of our Filipino bishops and priests, i.e. the hierarchy and followers, are not sliding towards the path taken by the Argentinian catholic church, such an unChristian path.
"I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it." - Ashleigh Brilliant, 1933

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary." - George Orwell

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe." Frederick Douglass,, born a slave, American abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer (1818-1895)

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Killing season in the Philippines
Friday, 02 June 2006, By Herbert Docena
FOCUS ON THE GLOBAL SOUTH

MANILA - Political activist Cathy Alcantara was gunned down by unidentified assailants last December 5, outside the resort where she had helped to organize a conference on farmers' rights.

Two months later, the lifeless body of her activist friend, 19-year-old Audie Lucero, was found in a remote rice field. Lucero was last seen surrounded by police officers and soldiers in a hospital lobby, inexplicably crying.

Annaliza Abanador-Gandia, another left-leaning activist, had frequently marched with the two victims, often at the forefront of demonstrations calling for various sorts of political change, including the ouster of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, an end to US military exercises in the Philippines, and overhaul of the World Trade Organization's free-trade policies.

On May 18, it was Abanador-Gandia's turn to die. It's unclear exactly what happened, because she was alone inside her shop that night. Her body was found slumped on a table, eight bullets through her face, chest and stomach.The gunpowder found on her face indicated that she had been shot at point-blank range.

All three victims were active organizers of the Movement for National Democracy (KPD), a left-leaning umbrella grouping of trade unions, farmers' and fishermen's organizations, and women's and youth groups, that has seen two more of its members shot and killed in provincial areas this year.

They are the latest victims in a creeping and escalating killing spree of left-leaning political activists in the Philippines. Over the past two months, at least 18 activists have been murdered by unidentified assailants in various areas of the country - an average of two killings per week. At no other time in the KPD's nearly 10-year history have so many of their members been assassinated.

The KPD is just one of many left-leaning groups now under shadowy assault.UNORKA (Ugnayan ng mga Nagsasariling Lokal na Organisasyon sa Kanayunan, or National Coordination of Autonomous Local Rural People's Organizations), a farmers' group that is part of the "Fight of the Masses" coalition, is now pushing for a "transitional revolutionary government" to replace Arroyo. So far, no fewer than 13 of UNORKA's leaders have been killed. The group's national secretary general was shot dead on April 24.

Task Force Mapalad (TFM), another peasants' group that has been pushing for land reform in Visayas and Mindanao, has seen at least eight of its farmer-leaders killed since 2001, the last one felled in May 2005. Lani Factor, the group's campaign coordinator, refers to the escalating violence against activists as the Philippines' "killing season".

The majority of the victims belong to the Bayan Muna group, which has representation in parliament and which since 2001 counts as many as 95 of its local leaders inexplicably killed. Robert de Castro, the group's secretary general, was quoted saying in the local press that local leaders "are being killed like chickens ... They are dropping dead like flies." [1]

Keeping track of the onslaught has not been easy. Human-rights organizations as a rule only count those cases that are reported to them, and each maintains separate lists. According to a running tally by the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper, the latest killings bring the total number of activists slain since Arroyo seized power in 2001 to 224. The human-rights group Karapatan estimates that figure much higher, at 601. Nearly all of the cases remain unresolved. An additional 140 activists are considered "disappeared" and remain missing. [2] And the number is growing by the week.

TROUBLE IN THE PROVINCES
Fallen activist Abanador-Gandia's province falls under the command of Major-General Jovito Palparan, the most controversial military official in the Philippines. Widely dubbed "the executioner" by his critics, Palparan stands accused of perpetrating a rash of killings and disappearances of leftist activists during his previous postings in Samar and Mindoro provinces.

He has consistently denied the charges, saying on record, "I can smile and laugh about it." At the same time, he has also gone on record to say that the extrajudicial killings are "helping" the armed forces of the Philippines get rid of those who instigate people to fight against the government. [3] To him, the deaths of activists are just "small sacrifices" in the military's anti-insurgency campaign. [4]

"We've got to hate the movement," Palparan said in a recent interview with Newsbreak magazine. "We've got to have that fighting stand." [5]

Palparan's provocative statements have caused a lightning rod of criticism. But increasingly, his is not a lone voice in the wilderness. His military superiors have a quiet way of expressing their agreement with Palaparan's tactics: through promotion. Palparan is elevating through the military's ranks and was recently bestowed the Distinguished Service Star medal for his "eminently meritorious and valuable service".

Government executive secretary Eduardo Ermita, himself a former military official, has hailed Palparan as a "good officer", saying his detractors automatically blame him for violent incidents without corroborating evidence.
Yet Palparan's fighting mood reflects a growing edginess in the military.

"The enemy that we confronted more than three decades ago is the same enemy that we are confronting today, only more scheming and obviously much more dangerous," wrote Lieutenant-General Romeo Dominguez in his recent book Trinity of War: The Grand Design of the CPP/NPA/NDF (Communist Party of the Philippines/New People's Army/National Democratic Front).

Published by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the book has become one of the military's "know your enemy" guidebooks, as indicated in a recent military Powerpoint presentation produced by the AFP top brass and circulated among soldiers. The volume discusses how the leftist movement has evolved since the late 1940s, how the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) took over its mantle beginning in the 1960s, and how it has morphed and splintered along ideological and tactical lines since the 1980s.

Complete with tables and flow charts, the book includes a comprehensive list of what it calls the "communist terrorists' legal sectoral front organizations" - down to the provincial level - including the names and top leaders of those groups that have broken away from the CPP's mainstream or that have only emerged in recent years.

Despite all the attention given to the Abu Sayyaf rebel movement in past years, "the single greatest threat to the Philippine state continues to come from the CPP/NPA", concludes Zachary Abuza, an expert with the congressionally funded US Institute of Peace, who has studied the various leftist and Moro secessionist groups fighting against the government in the Philippines. [6]

This threat has not been lost on the military and right-wing politicians, who have grown increasingly alarmed by the left's resurgence. The strength of the NPA was estimated at about 25,000 fighters during the martial-law period in the 1970s, dwindled to about 8,000 in the 1990s, and is reportedly on the upswing again. In recent months, the NPA has launched a series of military offensives across the country. Apart from the NPA, a number of smaller left-wing armed groups operate in remote provincial areas.

The Philippines' right has also been spooked by the left's recent success in democratic elections. When the formal institutions of democracy were restored after the 1986 "people power" uprising, the left was split between those who still saw the armed struggle as primary and those who wanted to contest power through electoral processes. The CPP initially boycotted the general elections that paved the way for Corazon Aquino's presidency.

While carrying on with what it calls the "protracted people's war", the CPP eventually decided to participate after the introduction of the party-list system, a measure that reserved a portion of seats in Congress to under-represented and marginalized sectors of society. Other leftist groups have abandoned armed struggle altogether, choosing to focus on elections and public campaigns to bring about political change.

In the last elections, left-leaning candidates won 11 of the 24 party-list seats filled. Though this proportion represents little more than 5% of the total national vote, the left's visibility in public debates has been disproportionately high compared with their actual number of parliamentary seats. On the streets, where in the Philippines political battles are frequently waged, only the broad left has been able consistently to mobilize people, albeit on a limited scale.

Military official Palparan has promised to "completely clear his area of responsibility of rebels before he retires in September this year". [7] It is a vow endorsed by the country's top civilian defense official, Avelino Cruz, who has also said that the "communist insurgency" can be defeated in "six to 10 years". [8]

Cruz is confident that this goal could be attained through the ambitious Philippine Defense Reform Program, a comprehensive plan to modernize and upgrade the capacity of the armed forces to conduct "internal security operations".

Intensifying its long-running involvement in the Philippines' counter-insurgency campaign, the United States jointly designed the Philippine Defense Reform Program with the Philippine military and is funding half of its $370 million budget. Washington has designated the CPP/NPA and the Alex Boncayao Brigade, a group that broke away from the NPA, as "foreign terrorist organizations".

But while the military has always considered the armed leftist groups to be a major military threat, and offensives and counter-offensives were launched way before Arroyo took office, there has recently been one significant shift in the mindset of key military officials: an increasing refusal to distinguish between armed and unarmed leftists, between those who are in the underground guerrilla movement and those who are in the open legal struggle.

The boundary, at least in the eyes of certain military and civilian officials, simply does not exist. This attitude is best summed up by Palparan's stock reply whenever he's reminded that the activists who are killed are unarmed and participate in legal mass organizations: "They're legal but they're doing illegal activities." [9] The decision to decriminalize the communists in 1994 was a bad idea, says Palparan, adding that he would be "happy" to have it restored. The Trinity of War stresses - in bold typeface - that, while the CPP still considers parliamentary struggles secondary to the armed struggle, both struggles are "complementary, interrelated, and interactive."

This outlook is shared by the civilian leadership. "We encourage communism as well as socialism as a party just like those in Europe," said presidential chief of staff Michael Defensor. "What we do not want is when they preach armed revolution."

According to National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, "What we are fighting today is no longer the classic guerrilla warfare. They have infiltrated and entered our democratic process." He has railed against how the left's elected parliamentarians are taking advantage of their office to advance the revolution. He has constantly complained about how Bayan Muna members "moonlight" as NPA fighters and how they are, to paraphrase Palparan, straddling both sides of what the government defines to be legal and illegal activities.

'WE HATE COMMUNISTS'
It's obviously a charge that those who have been killed will not have the opportunity to contest. Most of the victims belonged to legal leftist or left-leaning organizations enumerated in the AFP's list of alleged "front"organizations. As a recent Amnesty International report puts it, "Increased killing in particular provinces were reportedly linked to the public labeling of leftist groups as NPA front organizations by local AFP commanders."

Prior to activist Abanador-Gandia's killing, for instance, police and military officials in Bataan had ominously told KPD members, "We already know who you are. We know who's really behind you. We know all of you."

Other activists belong to organizations that are locked in bitter land disputes with powerful landlords who, aided by the state's tacit consent or lack of political will, have historically used thugs to eliminate peasants pushing for land reform. With their lands now subject to expropriation, these landlords, said TFM campaign coordinator Factor, have been acting like "mad, rabid dogs unleashed".

Most of the killings are concentrated in areas of increased militarization and intensified counter-insurgency operations. In Palparan's Central Luzon, more than 50 leftists have been killed, or nearly a quarter of the total 224 killings compiled by the Philippine Daily Inquirer. In that region, the military has embedded itself in 10-man detachments in various villages, conducting door-to-door interrogations and nightly patrols.

They have even taken to organizing anti-communist workshops and mobilizing protest rallies in support of the military. Participants of these rallies say they were told to make placards saying, "We hate communists." Negros, where a number of the killings are concentrated, is another province where the military has launched what the region's military chief, Lieutenant-General Samuel Bagasin has described as "decisive operations".

The victims are apparently not chosen at random. Almost all of those that have been executed are known leaders or organizers who actively worked on the ground and recruited new members into their organizations. The operations are in most cases surgical and well targeted. And while provincial and municipal-level organizers were being picked off, national leaders are also being persecuted.

Facing rebellion charges, at least one congressman from Anakpawis remains in detention, while five others camped out in Congress for two months to elude arrest. Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales has told them to "go back to the mountains where they belong", [10] an allusion to where the CPP has historically pitched its base camps.

Activist Factor suspects that the calculated elimination of the upper echelons of his organization is an attempt to terrorize members and scare off potential recruits in the hope of slowly debilitating the movement. One local columnist has called it a "kill one, scare 100" tactic. [11] That the activists are not being killed en masse, but rather at a slow-motion rate of one every other day, seems calculated to maximize the chilling effect while also minimizing public outrage.

In a number of cases, witnesses have pointed directly to uniformed soldiers, policemen, or known paramilitary or vigilante groups as the assailants. In many other cases, the victims were shot dead by a pair of motorcycle-riding masked men. Observers point out that this manner of killing is reminiscent of the period in the late 1980s when, at the height of the "total war" waged by the Aquino government against the left, masked motorcycle-riding men also shot and killed activists across the country. According to the human-rights group Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, up to 585 were killed during that orgy of extrajudicial violence.

PROUD HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD
The government publicly views the widespread killing of activists as just a sad coincidence. There is no set pattern and the killings are unrelated, officials contend. Accusations against state security officials are routinely shrugged off.
A police spokesman has claimed that if there's any pattern at all, it's just part of the normal crime-rate cycle. "Sometimes it falls, sometimes it goes up," Philippine National Police spokesman Samuel Pagdilao was quoted as saying about the spate of activist killings. [12]

State officials have repeatedly insisted that there's no state-sanctioned crackdown on activists. "We have nothing to hide about, and we are proud of our human-rights record," press secretary Ignacio Bunye recently said.Earlier, Arroyo called accusations of human-rights violations "an insult" to the military.

Other high-ranking officials have claimed that if anyone is to blame, it's the activists themselves. According to this view, the revolution is once again devouring its own children - just as it did in the 1980s when, in an operation that has since been acknowledged by the CPP leadership, at least 2,000 party members were ordered killed as suspected government infiltrators.

But those on the left no longer aligned with the CPP and who have been openly critical of its anti-infiltration campaign have come out to dismiss this charge as both opportunistic and ludicrous. Robert Francis Garcia, secretary general of the Peace Advocates for Truth, Healing and Justice, an organization of survivors, relatives and friends of victims of the CPP's past internal purge, believes that the government is "capitalizing on the issue to hammer down the CPP/NPA".

Garcia points out that the manner by which the CPP's purge was carried out then bears little resemblance to how activists are being killed nowadays.Then, Garcia recalls, suspected infiltrators were arrested, detained and interrogated by party agents - they were not executed summarily in public as is happening now.

Even an officially constituted police task force has recently identified soldiers and paramilitary forces as suspects in at least some of the killings. [13] The normally timid Commission on Human Rights (CHR), an independent constitutional body, has stated that the "pattern of complaints that come to us show members of the armed forces and the PNP [Philippine National Police] as suspects". Assuming that the government is not behind the many unresolved killings, the commission points out that it still has a duty to solve and prevent them.

Unfortunately, for many of the cases, there are no smoking guns, and the masterminds are not in the habit of giving receipts to their hired assassins. But even a cursory survey of the killings over recent months makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that there is an ongoing systematic and deliberate mission to terrorize - if not exterminate - the left being carried out by those who have both the motive and means to do so.

Even if one assumes that a portion of the killings could be explained away as the result of personal grudges or of turf wars among different armed leftist factions, the vast majority of the cases paint an alarming pattern.

A POOR RECORD
Arroyo's administration is turning out to be the most repressive regime in the Philippines since Ferdinand Marcos' corrupt authoritarian rule.According to the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, about 3,400 people were killed and more than 700 disappeared during Marcos' 14-year dictatorship.

According to Senator Manny Villar, citing figures provided by the CHR, Arroyo's five-year term has already eclipsed all three previous presidents'combined 11-year tenure in terms of the number of people executed, tortured, or illegally detained.

This is not to say that all was well before Arroyo came to power. Previous administrations also tallied their fair share of rights violations. But as Max de Mesa, the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates chair and longtime human-rights activist, points out, the total number of cases of rights violations under Arroyo should not be compared as separate from those of her predecessors.

Arroyo's government, he says, is still obliged to resolve those past violations - something her government has so far wholly failed to do. As such, the totals under the previous regimes should be added to that under Arroyo, he contends.

At the beginning of Arroyo's term, most of the victims were Muslim civilians, who were often rounded up and detained in droves, caught up in the government's US-backed "war on terror". In one particularly shocking episode, caught live on national television in March last year, the country's highest-ranking security officials, with apparent approval from the president, supervised the storming of a prison after suspected Abu Sayyaf leaders being held there mounted an uprising.

Despite being unarmed and secured against a wall, 26 detainees were shot dead. Human-rights groups called the incident a "massacre" and the CHR has since endorsed their recommendation to file murder charges against the officials.

In heavily militarized Sulu in the southern Philippines, where the military has been pursuing the Abu Sayyaf group, there have been numerous allegations of serious human-rights violations by the armed forces, including the February 2005 massacre of a family, which finally provoked the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) to recommence attacking government forces.

Disappearances, beheadings, and summary executions have once again become the norm in the area. But the government's documented abuses have not been given the same attention as the atrocities committed by the Abu Sayyaf.

Perhaps the clearest demonstration of the government's failure to protect and guarantee civil liberties has been the unbridled killing of journalists.Freedom of the press has never come at a higher price for at least 42 journalists who have been killed since Arroyo took power - or about half of the estimated 79 killed since 1986. This record prompted the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists to rank the Philippines in 2005 as the "most murderous" country for journalists in the world next to Iraq. Some have contested that label, saying the country is in a league of its own; Iraq, after all, is a war zone.

While local bosses and criminal elements, and not state agents, are likely to be behind many of the journalists' killings, the government's tepid response shows its inability - or unwillingness - to protect the press.

Instead of working to bring the killers to justice, Secretary of Justice Raul Gonzales has recently suggested that media practitioners should arm themselves in self-defense. He also implied that the killings may have nothing to do with press freedom. "There are media men killed in drinking sprees or because of a woman," Gonzalez recently said.

While human-rights violations have steadily mounted, the situation has taken a sharp turn for the worse after Arroyo, facing widespread calls for her ouster from across the political spectrum, began to use more brazenly coercive measures to retain her grip on power. For instance, she has banned public demonstrations and authorized the use of force to disperse them. She has gagged public officials from testifying in congressional hearings.

Finally, on February 24, she declared a "state of national emergency". This was interpreted by police and military officials as carte blanche to conduct arrests without warrants and to raid and intimidate media entities. While the "state of emergency" was quickly lifted - and was recently declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court - human-rights violations have not stopped; rather, they have spiked.

Last week, five leaders of the Union of the Masses for Democracy and Justice (UMDJ), a group identified with imprisoned former president Joseph Estrada, were abducted in broad daylight - not in the countryside but in the capital Manila - and were missing for about two days. Pressed whether the military had arrested the UMDJ leaders, executive secretary Eduardo Ermita denied the allegations and emphatically repeated the government's standard line, "They are automatically pointing at the administration as the culprit, which is unfair."

But only two hours later, a military spokesperson confirmed that the five were indeed arrested and detained by intelligence agents. It was the same military spokesperson who, just the day before, also disavowed any knowledge of the five's whereabouts. Accused of being NPA infiltrators plotting to assassinate the president and a number of cabinet members, the detainees were later released because of "insufficient evidence". Such cases illustrate that the state is conducting commando-style operations against activists and casts doubts on its claims that it has not been involved in unresolved killings and disappearances.

THINKING ABOUT A REVOLUTION
In many ways, the recent wave of killings is a tragic reprise of previous episodes in Philippine history. In 1946, leftist legislators were also expelled from Congress and driven to the mountains. Death squads stalked the Philippines' countryside in the early 1950s and late 1980s. Newspaper offices were routinely padlocked by the government during periods of martial law. State-sponsored disappearances gave birth to a generation of orphans and widows.

The escalating repression taking place now in the Philippines is no coincidence. Twenty years since the end of the dictatorship and three "people's power" uprisings later, Philippine society is hugely polarized.

If the recent killing spree signifies anything, it's that the growing coercion and the abandonment of democratic rights portend the fraying of the post-1986 political order, when the dictator Marcos was unceremoniously thrown from power and democracy restored. What will replace those democratic hopes, more than at any time in recent years, is a point of bitter political contention.

The political crisis triggered by charges of electoral fraud and corruption against Arroyo have brought these divisions clearly out in the open. In one camp are those who want to salvage and carry on with what academics like to call "oligarchic democracy" or "low-intensity democracy", where ballots are universally assured but food, jobs and housing are not.

On the other side of the debate are those who are struggling to move beyond limited democracy and are working to change the system from both above and underground. Over the past few months, these two sides have failed to oust Arroyo and now face an impasse.

But as the intensifying militarization and repression signify, another camp has moved to break the stalemate. Those who seek to roll back democracy and push the country toward a more authoritarian, albeit nominally democratic, system are again in the ascendant and clearly on the offensive.

For the ruling elites and conservatives from 1986, the formal institutions of democracy - free and fair elections, a free press, the protection and promotion of civil liberties - were then seen as the most effective way to maintain their hold on power and wealth.

But as the Philippines' massive marginalized population has increasingly employed these institutions to challenge the status quo, sections of the ruling class and military appear to have come to the conclusion that democracy is a double-edged sword. Low-intensity democracy is once again giving way to low-intensity warfare in the Philippines, while being "underground" has taken on its old meaning.

"Nothing has changed," said Lorena Paras, a former guerrilla fighter with the NPA who surrendered to the government in 1997 and now tries to live a quiet life at the foot of the Bataan Mountains. And yet for her, in reality so much has changed: last September, she personally witnessed uniformed military men drag away her husband, also a former NPA rebel.

His name has been added to the new list of the disappeared, and she, most likely, to the list of new widows. Lorena says that her thoughts have increasingly returned to the revolution she only recently left behind.#

(Herbert Docena is with Focus on the Global South, a research and advocacy organization.)

Notes

1. Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 15, 2006
2. Associated Press, May 30, 2006
3. Philippine Daily Inquirer, October 28, 2005
4. Philippine Daily Inquirer, June 2, 2005
5. Newsbreak, April 29, 2006
6.Zachary Abuza, "Balik-Terrorism: The Return of the Abu Sayyaf", Strategic Studies monograph, September 2005
7. Newsbreak website, May 31, 2006
8. Reuters, May 18, 2005
9. Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 21, 2004
10. Philippine Star, May 9, 2006
11. Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 26, 2006
12. Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 25, 2006
13. Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 16, 2006

SOURCE: http://www.focusweb.org/philippines/content/view/99/0/

Bert M. Drona

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