MANILA, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — A United Nations official has blamed the
Philippine government’s counter-insurgency strategy against leftist
rebels as the reason for a large number of extrajudicial killings to
have taken place in the country, according to a UN report published
here on Sunday.
Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings
in the Philippines, recently submitted a 21-page interim report to the
62nd UN General Assembly, which is entitled "Extrajudicial, Summary or
Arbitrary Executions".
MANILA, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — A United Nations official has blamed the
Philippine government’s counter-insurgency strategy against leftist
rebels as the reason for a large number of extrajudicial killings to
have taken place in the country, according to a UN report published
here on Sunday.
Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings
in the Philippines, recently submitted a 21-page interim report to the
62nd UN General Assembly, which is entitled "Extrajudicial, Summary or
Arbitrary Executions".
He said in the report that killings of leftist activists have drastically increased in the last six years in the Philippines.
"These killings have eliminated key civil society leaders, including
human rights defenders, trade unionists, land reform advocates and
others, intimidated a vast number of civil society actors and narrowed
the country’s political discourse. Depending on who is counting and
how, the total number of such executions ranges from over 100 to over
800," Alston said in his report.
He noted that "counter-insurgency strategy and recent changes in the
priorities of the criminal justice system are of special importance to
understanding why the killings continue."
Alston made a fact-finding mission to the Philippines in February
and reported to the 4th session of the UN Human Rights Council in
Geneva in March that an "order of battle" document against left-wing
insurgents has been adopted and practiced by the Armed Forces of the
Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP).
An order of battle, he explained, is an organizational tool used by
the military intelligence to list and analyze its enemy units.
He said the document, co-signed by senior military and police
officials, calls upon "all members of the intelligence community…to
adopt and be guided by this update to enhance a more comprehensive and
concerted effort against the CPP-NPA/NDF (Communist Part of the
Philippines-New People’s Army/National Democratic Front)."
Alston said the document, some 110 pages in length, lists hundreds
of groups and individuals who have been classified on the basis of
intelligence as members of organizations which the military deems
illegitimate.
The UN rapporteur also maintained in his report to the UN General
Assembly that the military is in a state of denial concerning the
numerous extrajudicial executions in which its soldiers were
implicated.
He rejected the AFP’s claim that the left-wing insurgents of NPA
perpetrate most of the killings through internal purge. He also
expressed alarm on the number of Filipino journalists being killed with
increasing frequency "as a result of the prevailing impunity together
with the structure of the media industry."
Alston added that disputes between peasants and landowners, as well
as armed groups, lead to killings in the context of agrarian reform
efforts, and the police often provide inadequate protection to the
peasants involved.
He lamented that a number of street children are being killed in
broad daylight by a death squad that operates in Davao City in southern
Philippines.
Alston also said in the on-going armed conflicts in western Mindanao
and the Sulu archipelago, "serious abuses clearly do occur and that
improved monitoring mechanisms are necessary."