AFP feigning innocence on lumad slays - activists

From InterAksyon (Nov 9): AFP feigning innocence on lumad slays - activists



Michelle Campos, daughter of Manobo datu Dionel Campos whom activists and lumad groups say was killed by militias backed by the Army, speaks at a rally outside the papal nunciature in Manila in this file photo. On Monday morning, some 700 activists led by the League of Filipino Students marched on Camp Aguinaldo to denounce what they called the AFP's "Pontius Pilate" stance in feigning innocence in the death of lumad leaders like Campos, yet secretly backing the militias who carry out the murders. INTERAKSYON.COM FILE

The League of Filipino Students (LFS) and 700 Lumad participants in the Manilakbayan ng Mindano 2015 marched on Camp Aguinaldo  Monday to denounce what they described as the military’s move to wash its hands of the murders of the indigenous people's leaders.

LFS led other activists in criticizing the military's tactice of distancing itself from the lumad killings, in a protest just outside the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) general headquarters in Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City.

It described the Philippine Army (PA) as an indispensable partner of paramilitary units in carrying out the killings of the more vocal lumad leaders and committing other human rights violations in Mindanao - this, while allegedly hiding behind militias it has created and funded, and continues to support.

“Admit your crimes, AFP! Drop the Pontius Pilate act! The accounts of hundreds of Lumad in Manila and the stories of thousands who are still in evacuation centers are testaments that the military is responsible for the atrocities in Mindanao,” said LFS national chairperson Charisse Bañez.

According to her, Michelle Campos, daughter of Manobo datu Dionel Campos who was killed in Lianga, Surigao del Sur on September 1, had clearly narrated that her father was taken and shot by a paramilitary group organized by the AFP.

Michelle had also revealed that soldiers were watching and laughing while her father and his cousin were being slaughtered,.

Bañez said there are more than enough documents and testimonies proving the accountability of AFP. "For the military to continue feigning innocence even as it masterminded the killings is an infuriating insult to the people.”

Bañez counted 144 victims of extra-judicial killings in Mindanao, including 56 Lumads; she said 13 massacres were also recorded. Common in all these cases, she said, is the involvement of the AFP.

The deployment of more than half (56 percent) of the AFP in Mindanao is proof not only of heavy militarization but also of their role in planning and executing tactical operations to eliminate the “enemies of the state,” a euphemism, she added, for those opposing logging and mining operations and demandingn control over ancestral domains.

She said insurgency has become a convenient excuse for attacking IP communities and pushing them out of their traditional settlements.

She lamented that the AFP and its backers like the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), as well as the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (Opapp) and the Department of Social Work and Development (DSWD) have insisted that up to 74 percent of New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas in Mindanao come from indigenous communities.

The government, she said, is using the Oplan Bayanihan (OPB) counter-insurgency campaign to propagate "the irrational policy that those who support the NPA or are deemed to be backing the guerrillas do not enjoy human rights and are fair game to the military and its underlings," like the Magahat Bagani Force (MBF) that activists accused of murdering Campos.

The policy mirrors the US counterinsurgency (Coin) doctrine inculcated in the minds of AFP officers who were taught at Ft. Bragg in the US, she noted.

http://www.interaksyon.com/article/119930/afp-feigning-innocence-on-lumad-slays---activists