Two weeks and two presidential speeches ago, the US-Aquino regime continues to dodge the more important questions on what really happened in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, especially the involvement of the US government through its troops operating in the Philippines.
Two weeks and two presidential speeches ago, the US-Aquino regime continues to dodge the more important questions on what really happened in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, especially the involvement of the US government through its troops operating in the Philippines.
“The Aquino regime remains tight-lipped amid numerous accounts that indicate his complicity with the US government and the direct hand of the US government in the botched Operation Wolverine that killed Aquino’s own men and victimized thousands of civilians,” said Karapatan Secretary General Cristina Palabay.
“The US troops’ involvement in ground combat operation in the Philippines is not the first time. Only now, even the regime’s own state forces have become victims. BS Aquino can afford to turn his back against his own men,” she added.
In recent years,Karapatan documented several incidents of US troops’ involvement in human rights violations especially in Moro areas. (Please see documented cases through https://www.karapatan.org/Karapatan+reminds+public+on+US+troops%E2%80%99+atrocities+under+the+VFA)
“For centuries, past and present Philippine governments allowed US political-economic and military interests to take over our national sovereignty and the Filipino people. Such is only brought to the fore when incidents as grave as Mamasapano happens. From the Mutual Defense Treaty, the Visiting Forces Agreement, the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, and through various counterinsurgency designs such as Aquino’s Oplan Bayanihan, the country has been dragged by the US in its wars of aggression and invasion,” Palabay said.
The lopsided military agreements with the US government, Palabay said, resulted in a long list of human rights violations committed against the Filipino people, especially the poor majority. The US-designed and directed counterinsurgency program, Oplan Bayanihan has claimed 299 lives of mostly peasant and indigenous peoples in the course of its implementation. Already, some 47,000 individuals from remote villages were displaced due to combat operations.
In an earlier statement, Karapatan said, “In a way, we find similarities between the plight of the families of the victims of human rights violations and those of the members of the Special Action Forces (SAF) who were used as pawns in the US-Aquino’s ‘war on terror’. They, too, are victims of Aquino’s puppetry to the interests of the United States government.”
“BS Aquino’s puppetry to the US has taken on a new height with the Mamasapano carnage that even those who are part of the system he represents are demanding for his accountability. It’s not far behind that, they too, would be with the people calling for his ouster,” ended Palabay. ###