“Thirteen massacres, 46 victims, seven of them are minors. These all happened under Commander-in-chief BS Aquino since 2010 up to the present,” Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay cried out in front of the Department of Justice today. Karapatan joined Bayan and other people’s organizations in a protest action on the continuing extrajudicial killings in the country.

“In the month of August alone, there are two documented cases of massacre, in Masbate and Bukidnon, killing nine civilians, two of them are children. All were tagged as NPA members and supporters,” Palabay said. “But, instead of going after the army killers, Pres. Aquino is busy campaigning with Mar Roxas and the Liberal Party,” Palabay said.

Karapatan said that the Inter Agency Task Force, led by the Department of Justice, which is tasked to investigate extrajudicial killings, has nothing to show in terms of effective and immediate prosecution of foot soldiers and high military officials who perpetrate human rights violations. “We call on Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to extricate herself from these early election campaign activities of the Liberal Party and heed the cries for justice of the victims and their families,” Palabay said.

Among those recently killed was Teodoro “Ka Tudoy” Escanilla, Karapatan Sorsogon spokesperson, who was killed on August 20, 2015 purportedly by elements of the 31st Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army. In February 2015, Sgt. Rene Enteria of the 31st Infantry Battalion-Philippine Army arrested, tortured and then offered a resident of the same barangay where Escanilla lived Php50, 000 and a .45 caliber gun to kill Escanilla. The person, whose name cannot be disclosed for security purposes, immediately reported the incident, and other human rights violations committed by the 31st IB-PA in their community, to Karapatan-Sorsogon.

On August 3 in Masbate, three habal-habal drivers and a nephew of a barangay captain of Del Carmen were asked to help the wounded soldiers who were ambushed by the New People’s Army. “Instead of showing gratitude, members of the 9th Infantry Division (ID) and 96th Division Reconnaissance Company (DRC) took the lives of these people with revenge,” Palabay said. The victims were Adam Fajardo, Joebert Badillo, Gary Vistar and Rogelio Abelida.

On August 19, in Sitio Mandum, Brgy. Mendis, Pangantucan, Bukidnon, 27 residents, including barangay councillor Isabero Sulda found five dead bodies at the Samia residence. Around the corpses were 22 soldiers of the 3rd company of 1st Special Forces Battalion. The residents’ faces were photographed and their names were listed down as they were ordered not to look at the soldiers’ faces. Then they were told to carry the bodies of their dead neighbors.

Herminio Samia, 70, a blind man was found near a tree; his intestines exposed and his back badly damaged. Emer Somina, 17, Herminio’s nephew, was found near the door. Norman Samia,13, Herminio’s grandson, was found a few steps away. Norman’s right ear was removed and his jaw was dislodged. The left hand of Welmer Somina, Emer’s brother, was removed from his wrist and had a gunshot on his nose, disfiguring his face. Jobert Samia’s body, son of Herminio was found near Welmer’s.

A 15-year-old eye-witness who escaped the massacre recalled that the day before, soldiers of the 3rd company of 1st Special Forces Battalion told them, “Kayong mga NPA na nandyan sa itaas ng bahay, lumabas kayo diyan at bumaba dito!” (You NPAs inside the house, get out and get down!) Even Herminio, who was blind, was forced to step down from their house and walk towards a coffee tree. There he was shot. Then the soldiers shot Emer. The witness was the next target but he was able to run and hide behind big rocks. He told his father what happened but a few days after, he could no longer speak.

“The soldiers are still at the barangay hall and day care center up to now!” Palabay said. “The soldiers even had the audacity to stay in the community where they killed its residents like they were proud of what they did!”

In the first six months of this year, there are already 33 documented victims of extrajudicial killings. In August alone, there are 11 victims of extrajudicial killings.

“These soldiers commit massacres with such shamelessness because of the policy outlined in Oplan Bayanihan, where activists are targetted and civilians are considered collateral damage. The DOJ’s inaction to massacres and extrajudicial killings encourages, or even heightens the state of impunity,” Palabay said.

http://www.karapatan.org/Massacres+and+extrajudicial+killings+committed+amid+early+campaigning+of+Aquino+party

Reference:
Cristina “Tinay” Palabay
Secretary General
+63917-3162831

Angge Santos
Media Liaison
+63918-9790580

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PUBLIC INFORMATION DESK
publicinfo@karapatan.org
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Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights
2nd Flr. Erythrina Building
#1 Maaralin corner Matatag Streets
Central District, Diliman
Quezon City, PHILIPPINES 1101
Telefax: (+63 2) 4354146
Web: http://www.karapatan.org

KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties.  It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign.

ILPS Philippines Chapter

MANILA.  The visit of US Pacific Command chief Adm. Harry Harris in the Philippines signals intensified US intervention in the country and the region using the expansion of China as an excuse.

Harris’ visit comes just a month after US Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Scott Swift visited the Philippines and made a seven-hour surveillance mission over the West Philippine Sea.

This was revealed by the Philippines chapter of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS-Phils) as the US admiral met with Armed Forces chief Gen. Hernando Iriberri and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin at Camp Aguinaldo yesterday.

Adm. Harris presented the Pentagon’s new “Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy.” It highlights three regional maritime objectives: “to safeguard the freedom of the seas; deter conflict and coercion; and promote adherence to international law and standards.”

“It is, in fact, freedom for the US to exploit the seas, profit from conflict and shared interest with China, while maintaining US non-adherence to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS),” the ILPS-Phils said.

A Washington Post report noted that the Asia-Pacific boasts eight of the ten busiest global container ports. The South China Sea alone is home to 10% of global fisheries production and may contain 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Nearly 30% of global maritime trade transits its waters annually, including about $1.2 trillion in ship borne trade bound for U.S. ports. East China Sea figures are 200 million barrels of oil and 1-2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The US plans to home-port 60% of its naval and overseas air assets to the Pacific by 2020. It is upgrading its forward-deployed carrier; home-porting its three newest stealth destroyers; and deploying its newest air operations-oriented amphibious assault ship, two additional Aegis-capable destroyers, an additional attack submarine, and manifold advanced aircraft. It is funding wide-ranging weapons modernization, with—at long last—increased focus on missiles.

The strategy builds on Office of Naval Intelligence and Pentagon reports that China’s navy “now possesses the largest number of vessels in Asia, with more than 300 surface ships, submarines, amphibious ships, and patrol craft.” China’s 303 naval combatants dwarf the 202 possessed by Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines combined.

Chinese island building in the South China Sea has added 2,900 acres of artificial land, dwarfing Vietnam’s 80, Malaysia’s 70, the Philippines’ 14, and Taiwan’s 8. China has built 17 times more artificial island area in 20 months than rival claimants combined over the past 40 years. It has generated 95% of all artificial land in the Spratlys.

“We are critical of China’s aggressive expansion as we continue to resist all forms of imperialist intervention and the US violations of Philippine sovereignty,” the ILPS-Phils said.

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I L P S  
Philippine Chapter
Office Address:
2/F IBON Center, 114 Timog Avenue
Quezon City 1103,  PHILIPPINES
Tel: +63 2  9277062
E-mail: ilps.phils@gmail.com
Website: www.ilps-phils.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ILPSPhils
Twitter: www.twitter.com/ILPS_Phils

“Impunity is at its peak in the Aquino administration’s remaining days, leaving a horrible legacy of killing human rights defenders while babysitting criminals.”

These were the words of Ernan Baldomero, vice-chairperson of rights group Hustisya, as they condemned two consecutive killings on August 18 and 19, in the provinces of North Cotabato and Sorsogon.

In the morning of August 18, Joel Gulmatico, 58, and chair of the Arakan Peasant Progressive Organization (APPO), was shot dead while driving a motorcycle on his way to Barangay Naje in Arakan, North Cotabato. Gulmatico was a former member of the barangay (village) council in the said barangay for three terms. He ran for village chair in 2013 but lost.

According to rights groups, Gulmatico was an opponent to the presence of the Peace and Development Program (PDOP) in Barangay Naje. The PDOP is part of the AFP’s Oplan Bayanihan.

“Not another one in Arakan! We demand justice for Gulmatico, as well as for Fr. Fausto Tentorio and farmer Ramon Batoy.  Justice remains elusive, and the people in Arakan have all the reasons to demand the pull-out of troops in their communitiees. Who else has the motive to silence the likes of Gulmatico?” said Baldomero.

On October 2011, Italian missionary Tentorio was killed by alleged members of the paramilitary group Bagani. Three days after his murder, Batoy was killed when soldiers belonging to the 57th Infantry Battalion attacked their community in an alleged raid to arrest the priest’s killers.

“As it turned out, it is the military that is coddling the perpetrators. By allowing the existence of paramilitary groups, Aquino’s Oplan Bayanihan continues to sow fear in the communities, despite the use of terms such as ‘peace and development.’ They continue the same policy of repression as implemented by previous governments. We join the call to dismantle paramilitary groups and to pull out military troops in communities,” Baldomero added.

Hustisya also expressed indignation with the killing of Teodoro “Todoy” Escanilla, spokesperson of a provincial chapter of Karapatan in Sorsogon, who was killed inside his house on the midnight of August 19.

“We are indignant at Ka Todoy’s murder, at a time when plunderers and human rights violators like Juan Ponce Enrile and Jovito Palparan are pampered by the Aquino government to the core. The killings of Gulmatico and Escanilla deserve justice,” said Baldomero.

Karapatan has documented 262 victims of extrajudicial killings since Aquino assumed office.

Reference:
Ernan Baldomero
Hustisya Vice Chairperson
+63939-2315464

Hustisya National Office
2/F #1 Maaralin cor. Matatag Streets
Central District, Diliman
Quezon City 1100 Philippines
Telephone: (02) 434-7486 | (02) 435-4146
Mobile: 0908-4383826
E-mail: hustisya.national@gmail.com

Every year, “Tiempo Muerto” or Dead Season continues to inflict economic hardships on the lives of the sugar workers in Negros. This annual phenomenon of hunger and dislocation has been a curse to the sugar workers’ family since Spanish period. It lasted for 3 to 4 months every year and its severity peaks in the month of August to September.

Hunger is the twin image of Tiempo Muerto. It is a period in a year wherein the sugar workers’ family endures the effect of a situation where they have no income as a result of the absence of any jobs in most haciendas. Budgeted work in few haciendas only earns sugar worker an income ranging from P200 to P300 pesos every week. It redounds only to P1.59 to P2.38 per meal budget of a sugar workers’ family with 6 members. Other Haciendas have no work at all.

Tiempo Muerto is firmly tied up to land monopoly. Land monopoly in the sugar producing regions has not been eliminated by land reform program of the government called CARP/CARPER after more than 28 years after of implementation since 1988 under Cory Aquino presidency. This government land reform program clearly failed in its supposed purpose in freeing the sugarcane workers from the clutches of poverty and hunger.

If the government’s land reform program failed, so are the Sugar Development Act and its main feature, the Block Farm program that, according to this act, will help mainly our agrarian reform beneficiaries. How this program could help our ARBs where, in fact, more than 80% of their land were already in the hands of big hacienderos and ariendadores.

Nowhere in the provisions of the Sugar Development Act that will solve the problems of the sugar workers including perennial low wages, job insecurity and violations of many employers in labor standards law implementation and in Social Security System law. The main backbone of the sugar industry, the sugar workers, has no place to get well within this Act.

Sugar Development Act cannot get rid of Tiempo Muerto, and therefore, cannot get rid of hunger of the sugar workers.

The irony is that Tiempo Muerto is a heartbreaking reality even our so called sugar leaders, government officials and government agencies, accepted as fact but did nothing seriously to root out its cause thru genuine and pro-workers economic plans and programs.

Every Local Government Units have millions of Peso in its 20% Development Fund and Calamity Fund every year. The Department of Labor and Employment have millions of Peso from the SAB Socio Economic Fund and several millions fron unreleased and unclaimed Social Amelioration Bunos Fund. Where does it go?

Tiempo Muerto is a political calamity that struck every sugar worker in various forms and degrees of extremity. It is an annual calamity to the families of 780,000 sugar workers who depends their lives to the industry that no amount of Marching for Peace brouhaha of the Philippine Army and the provincial government can put it out of sight.

Worst is, the NFA warehouses in Negros was full of rice stocks that started to rot while hundreds of thousands of our hacienda workers in the rural areas suffers in food shortage. Where will be these huge stocks of rice prepared for?

Are these stocks is for the election campaign of our honorable politicians to augment their campaign logistics to perpetuate their hold to government positions? Why they cannot release these stocks during dead season to help our starving sugar workers and their family in many haciendas?

If the government bureaucracy is serious enough to stop Tiempos Muertos, they should pass the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill to break land monopoly and introduce comprehensive and inclusive economic program that includes the welfare of the sugar workers.

We call on the Governor of this province, Local Government Units and other concern agencies to release food assistance to the Sugar Workers!

Reference:
JOHN M. LOZANDE
Secretary General
National Federation of Sugar Workers
MP No. +639072522233

MEDIA ADVISORY

National Federation of Sugar Workers
Bacolod City
August 18, 2015

The National Federation of Sugar Workers will conduct a 2-days protest activity on august 19 to 20, 2015 demanding government instrumentalities for Tiempo Muerto related assistance and policy advocacies to the sugar workers.

This activity will address its demands to the Department of Agrarian Reform Provincial Office, the Social Security System Office, Department of Labor and Employment, National Food Authority and to the Provincial Government.

The activity will be participated by more than 1,000 farm workers from different Haciendas.

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Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura
Federation of Agricultural Workers | Philippines
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