Phelan, Liam --- "The War of Terror's Other Front: The Philippines" [2003] HRightsDef 4; (2003) 12(2) Human Rights Defender 7

The War of Terror’s other front: The Philippines

Liam Phelan

Liam Phelan is a researcher with the US-based Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, working on the social, environmental, economic and human rights impacts of public financing for fossil fuel extraction projects in the Asia-Pacific. Liam is also a member of Action for Peace and Development in the Philippines, a NSW-based Philippines solidarity group.

It is difficult to know where to begin in conveying the experience of being on the islands of Mindanao and Basilan in the Philippines in July last year. Now, as outright war is unleashed against the people of Iraq, the reality of life in Mindanao and Basilan – also war zones – is as fresh in my mind as ever. The horror of what passes for normal in the rural areas of the southern Philippines is almost unrecognisable from familiar Sydney. And yet an eight hour plane flight is all it takes to travel from Sydney to Manila. Another flight of about an hour lands you on Mindanao, in Zamboanga City which only makes the news back here in Australia when a ‘terrorist’ bomb goes off. A half hour ferry ride and you’re on Basilan, in Isabela, the largest town. From there it’s a local jeepney (brightly painted Filipino bus) ride to small villages such as Tuburan in the interior of that small island.

I was in the Philippines as a participant in an International Solidarity Mission (ISM). The ISM was undertaken with two aims: to document human rights abuses occurring as a result of the massive US militarisation of the area; and, to show solidarity with and publicise the situation of the Filipino people suffering the abuses.

Of course the journey that we – the participants in the ISM – made wasn’t that quick, simple or, straight forward. An incredible amount of meticulous preparation by our Filipino hosts, spanning many months, went into making the ISM possible. There was a particular commitment to safety of the participants for the duration of the mission as well as the Filipinos that would remain behind. Forty international representatives participated. The largest groups were from Japan and the US and others came from Taiwan, Korea, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, and Australia. Two Filipino parliamentarians participated as did a number of other Filipinos. The Mission ran from 24 to 31 July and coincided with the wrapping up of joint US-Philippines ‘military exercises’ known as “Balikatan 02-1”. US President George W Bush had previously declared the Philippines the ‘second front’ in the indefinite and unbounded war on/of terror.

The Mission was for me the most heart-wrenching thing of which I’ve ever been a part. With only a week for the mission, the focus was on attempting to confirm the results of months of painstaking investigative work undertaken previously by indigenous human rights groups. The results of the Mission have been carefully collated into a substantial report. Very briefly, what the ISM was able to confirm and/or discover for itself includes:

•	multiple killings of unarmed civilians by Filipino troops engaged in exercises with US troops;
•	arrest and incarceration of civilians in horrific prison conditions without due process or evidence beyond the accusation by an anonymous informant for a crime – more than twenty-five children, women and men suffering this fate are crowded together into jails in Isabela and Manila;
•	torture of incarcerated civilians;
•	the displacement of people from their homes, farms and means of livelihoods across large areas.
•	US troops were implicated directly in at least one instance of abuse. In Tuburan village, on 25 July 2002, US and Filipino troops burst into a family home in the middle of the night and shot a man in the leg. His family, including wife, elderly mother, sister-in-law and her baby were forced to flee. The man was taken and held at a military base without any non-military access for many weeks. His wife had to go into hiding in another part of the country.

The ISM was able to confirm and discover all that it did through:

•	site visits to jails, cities and villages;
•	interviews with military and civilian officials;
•	interviews with victims;
•	hearing testimonies from victims.

It was through the provision of testimonies that the horror of life in a militarised zone was made most clear. One woman giving testimony in Isabela wept as she told of the day earlier in the year when soldiers had come to her village and led away three men and her young son. On the television news that night she and others in the village were stricken to see the dead bodies of the four villagers on the ground, with the interviewed soldiers describing the dead as suspected Abu Sayaf Group (ASG) sympathisers who had died in a gun battle. Another woman told of a family member being anally raped with a Coke bottle while held at the military base in Zamboanga City.

The most harrowing day for me was 26 July when we visited the provincial jail in Isabela. Over 100 children, women and men were all crowded into the one small jail – consisting of four cells. Chicken pox and tuberculosis were rife. People only had the clothes they were wearing. We know this because incredibly, and after some to-ing and fro-ing with the provincial governor’s office, we were allowed into the jail building. More than twenty of the inmates were there because of an anonymous tip off to the military that they were ASG sympathisers. After some negotiation this group was allowed – handcuffed – out into the prison yard so that we could hear their stories. One boy, now 14, recounted how he’d left his school grounds one lunchtime to buy materials for a school project when he was picked up by police and put in a cell. From there he was taken to the jail. No evidence, no trial. No sentence. Just suspicion. It was some days before his family discovered his whereabouts. Most had been there for many months. The day that we visited was the first day that they had been let out of the jail building and into the yard.

The sheer weight of evidence of abuses is compelling. We left the country in no doubt that the massive militarisation of the area (courtesy of US forces and the Philippines’ military acting in tandem) has created nothing short of a human rights disaster for local Moro and predominantly Muslim people. US troops have returned to the Philippines in numbers for the first time since the closure of US bases in the 1990s. Now, troops are stationed there to participate in joint exercises under the Visiting Forces Agreement, ratified in 1999. A potentially unending series of joint exercises is planned, and the terms of the agreement between the US and the Philippines governments in effect render all of the Philippines one giant US base – US troops have free range across all of the country and enjoy immunity from Filipino law. One hundred troops stayed on after the finish of the “Balikatan 02-1” exercises and new exercises to last nine months, this time in central Luzon island, began in October last year.

US troops are stationed in southern Philippines in the name of “human rights”. Their headquarters is within the grounds of the Philippines’ forces Southern Command in Zamboanga City. The rationale given is to stamp out the Abu Sayaf Group. The ASG is a well known bandit group responsible for kidnapping Western tourists from resorts in southern Philippines and also Malaysia, holding them for ransom and decapitating some of their victims. The ASG has also kidnapped, held hostage and killed Filipino people. It is a horrific business. But it is only since President Bush’s announcement of the ‘War on Terror’ that the ASG has been labelled a terrorist group. Suddenly, the ASG allegedly has a political motive and links to the Al Quaeda terrorist group. In fact, there is no evidence to suggest either a newly found political motive or the existence of links to Al Quaeda, but it is convenient for the newly announced US agenda. Nevertheless, both the Philippines and the US have listed the ASG as terrorists. In a familiar twist, the original founders of the ASG, including Abdurajak Janjalani, were among the group of Moro people from Mindanao who were recruited and trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the early 1980s to fight in the US proxy war against the USSR in Afghanistan.

The areas visited by the ISM are among the poorest in the Philippines. According to government sources, the official poverty rate almost doubled from 32% last year to 63% in 2002. ISM delegates noticed the extremely poor living conditions of the people and heard revolting stories of oppression and exploitation, the breeding grounds of revolution as well as banditry. Many residents also testified how the militarization and continuing military offensives disrupt their economic activities and livelihoods.

One argument given in favour of US troops being stationed in the area is they can bring ‘development’ in the guise of roads and port facilities which have military uses and occasional health outreach exercises. However the so-called ‘civic action’ of the US military does not address the root causes of the people’s grave social and economic problems. Interviews with residents of Basilan revealed, however, that it was an effective propaganda tool to make the people accept the permanent war situation, militarization and deployment of foreign troops. It breeds passivity and dependence. This gets to the heart of the human rights impact of intensive militarisation. Beyond the lengthy list of specific instances of gross abuses, the massacres, the torture, the incarcerations and the displacements, is an all-pervasive and ever-present climate of oppression.

Update: Communist Academic Declared a ‘Terrorist’

Shortly after the ISM, on 8 August 2002, the US State Department listed the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the associated New People’s Army (NPA) as ‘foreign terrorist organisations’ and Professor Jose Maria Sison as a ‘terrorist’, whose assets must be frozen. The right-wing Dutch government immediately froze the ‘assets’ of Prof. Sison. The US State Department requested other governments to do the same, and the Philippines Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Blas Ople, toured the world to back this up. On 28 October, the European Union and Australia both listed the CPP, NPA and Prof. Sison as terrorists. To their embarrassment, the Philippines government did not do the same, since it had no anti-terrorist law of its own. In fact, it was engaged in a formal peace negotiation with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, of which the CPP and NPA are major components, and to which Prof. Sison is chief political consultant.

Prof. Sison was the founding chairperson of the CPP in 1968. He was captured and tortured by the Marcos dictatorship in 1976 and only released after the EDSA Revolution of February 1986. The target of an assassination plot, he did not return to the Philippines after making a speaking tour to Australia and Japan later in 1986. Eventually he and his family settled in the Netherlands in 1988, seeking political asylum. While the Dutch Government has not provided Prof. Sison with protection, he has been protected by the European Convention for the Protection of Fundamental Rights and Political Freedoms and the UN Refugee Convention.

In January 2003, the Philippines government laid two murder charges against Prof Sison, relating to the killing of two Congressmen in separate incidents in 2001 by the New Peoples Army. Then the Philippines government sought to extradite Sison from the Netherlands. One of these killings, where the victim was a senior intelligence officer notorious for torture and murder himself, had already been used to break off the peace talks taking place in Oslo in mid-2001.

Copies of Behind the ‘Second Front’: report of the International Solidarity Mission Against US Armed Intervention in the Philippines, July 24-31, 2002, can be obtained by emailing the author: [e-mail]