From the Daily Tribune (Mar 3): Human rights abuses in RP abetted by US — Karapatan
Militant group Karapatan said the US State Department report on the human rights abuses in the Philippines is “hypocritical,” saying the US is also responsible for the said abuses through military aid, deployment of troops and a counter-insurgency program that is the blueprint of Aquino’s Oplan Bayanihan.
“The US government foments human rights abuses in the Philippines by filling up the military war chest of the Aquino government. The US military aid is used for the implementation of Oplan Bayanihan which already victimized thousands of Filipinos, especially in the rural areas,” said Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay. She cited the $40-million military aid to the Philippines promised by State Secretary John Kerry in December when he visited the Philippines.
Palabay said, “Impunity persists precisely because of US backing. For its own political and economic interests, the US propped up regimes which are human rights violators — from the time of the Marcos dictatorship up to the present.”
The report, which came out two months after Kerry’s $40-million pledge, is “deceitful” according to Palabay. “It is image-building. The US government is trying to soften its image among Filipinos and also in the international community as it prepares for an increased and permanent presence in the Philippines for its vaunted Asian pivot,” she said.
In an article written by Azadeh Shahshahani and Vanessa Lucas of the National Lawyers Guild in the US, they said that US military aid to the Philippines rose to $30 million in 2012, from $11.9 million in 2011, signaling “US government’s renewed support for Oplan Bayanihan, the Aquino administration’s counter-insurgency program and the latest attempt to end a 45-year-old insurgency led by the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA).”
From July 2010 to December 2013, Karapatan documented 169 victims of extra-judicial killing. In the first six weeks of 2014, Karapatan already documented six victims of extra-judicial killing.
“Impunity exists because there is not one perpetrator arrested, prosecuted and jailed — they are promoted. The Commission on Human Rights cannot simply agree to the report. It is equally accountable because it issued clearances to military officials promoted by BS Aquino, despite pending court cases against them,” Palabay said.
http://www.tribune.net.ph/nation/human-rights-abuses-in-rp-abetted-by-us-karapatan
KARAPATAN (Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights) is the main national-level Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) human rights front organization with chapters active nationwide. The anti-government and anti-US agenda of this CPP front is evident in the statements issued by its secretary general, Christine Palabay.
ReplyDeleteOne of the main objectives of KARAPATAN is to discredit the Philippine government and military on the issue of human rights. Part of that objective includes attacking whatever operational plan that the Philippine military has in place to counter the CPP/NPA insurgency. At present that is OPLAN Bayanihan. An offshoot of that objective is to discredit and undermine US military assistance to the Philippines and oppose and mischaracterize the US military presence in the Philippines.