The New People's Army should 'end this charade of unjust people's courts and cease all executions,' says Human Rights Watch
The New People’s Army’s execution of a mayor and his son broke international humanitarian law and is “plain murder,” the New York-based Human Rights Watch said Tuesday, October 29.
The communist
guerrillas have claimed responsibility for the killing of Mayor Dario Otaza of
Loreto, Agusan del Sur, and his 27-year-old son Daryl, calling the act
“revolutionary justice” for Otaza’s alleged close ties with the military.
Posing as law
enforcement agents, the rebels raided the Otaza home in Butuan City
on October 19 and abducted
the mayor and his son. Their bodies were found a
day after in a village about 12 kilometers away from the city.
“The killing of
the Otazas – like other NPA executions – is just plain murder,” said Phil
Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human
Rights Watch. “The NPA’s actions and claims of revolutionary justice handed
down by people’s courts are flagrant violations of international law.”
Human Rights
Watch said that the NPA is “obligated to abide by international humanitarian
law, including common article 3 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its
Second Additional Protocol of 1977 (Protocol II), to which the Philippines is
party.”
This law “prohibits killing civilians, mistreating anyone in custody,
and convicting anyone in proceedings that do not meet international fair trial
standards. Article 6 of Protocol II specifies that criminal courts must be
independent and impartial, and the accused shall have ‘all necessary rights and
means of defense,’ among other guarantees,” the group added.
The rebels said
the Otazas assisted the military in displacing indigenous communities in the
region and torturing children, and that father and son masterminded the killing
of at least 3 people.
“Claims by the
NPA that defendants receive a fair hearing during its people’s court
proceedings are not supported by the facts,” Human Rights Watch said. Philip
Alston, the former United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary,
or arbitrary executions who investigated extrajudicial killings in the Philippines in
2007, described the people’s courts as “either deeply flawed or simply a sham.”
Human Rights
Watch said the NPA is also responsible for the following murders:
April 21, 2014:
NPA rebels shot and killed Mayor Carlito Pentecostes Jr. of Gonzaga town,
Cagayan province.
July 27, 2012:
NPA rebels killed Datu Causing Ogao, a leader of an indigenous people’s group,
in Davao City .
February 28,
2011: NPA rebels killed Jeffrey Nerveza, a civilian, in Albay, Bicol.
August 19, 2011:
the NPA killed Raymundo “Monding” Agaze in Kabankalan City ,
Negros Occidental.
July 13, 2010:
NPA members shot and killed Mateo Biong, Jr., a former mayor of Giporlos town, Eastern Samar .
July 2010: NPA
rebels shot and killed Sergio Villadar, a sugar cane farmer, in Escalante City , Negros Occidental.
“By resorting to
vigilantism in the name of justice, the NPA is only serving to harm its own
demands for justice for victims of military human rights violations,” Robertson
said. “The NPA should end this charade of unjust ‘people’s courts’ and cease
all executions.”
The NPA is behind
Asia 's longest running insurgency.
http://www.rappler.com/nation/110888-npa-murder-human-rights-watch