By CPP Information Bureau
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today dismissed the Aquino regime’s formation of the so-called “human rights superbody” as “nothing more than a publicity stunt to pretend that it is serious in defending human rights while its armed state agents continue to trample on human rights with impunity and increasing brutality.”
Aquino announced the issuance of Administrative Order No. 35 last Thursday which directs the formation of the Inter-Agency Committee (IAC) to handle cases of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other forms of human rights abuses. The IAC is supposed to prioritize human cases committed under the previous regime.
“The formation of this so-called human rights ‘superbody’ is a desperate attempt to shore up Aquino’s faltering popularity both locally and internationally due to continuing grave abuses of human rights,” added the CPP. “As if to insult the victims of human rights abuses, Aquino appointed the head of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) as members of the IAC,” said the CPP.
“This single act alone show clearly that this IAC will go nowhere in terms of resolving the outstanding cases of human rights violations carried out by military and police agents in line with the present and past reactionary regime’s policies of all-out war of suppression.”
“Aquino’s brutal Oplan Bayanihan war of suppression has reduced respect for human rights into empty rhetoric.”
“For three years now, the Aquino regime has promised to uphold human rights. Like many others, Aquino has failed to deliver on this promise, more than three years into his six-year term. On the contrary, violations of human rights continue to be committed by the AFP and PNP against civilians in the course of implementing Aquino’s Oplan Bayanihan war,” pointed out the CPP.
“Massacres, extrajudicial killings, torture, illegal arrests, beatings, threats of physical harm, violations of domicile and many other human rights transgressions are being perpetrated by state armed agents in the course of militarizing communities in the name of ‘peace and development’.”
“Last 18 October, soldiers of the Army’s 27th Infantry Battalion massacred three members of the Capeon family and wounded several others in Davao del Sur. The Capeons belong to the B’laan tribe whose members have been actively resisting the incursion of mining company SMI-Xstrata into their ancestral land. A few weeks later, on 11 November, in Guinobatan, Albay, soldiers of the 2nd Infantry Battalion shot and beheaded barangay councilor Ely Oguis, who the military has accused of being a supporter of the revolutionary cause. Oguis’ ears were cut off and his head buried in mud. A few days earlier, the same unit shot and killed civilian Dante Osma in front of his house, and just a few hundred meters away from the barracks of the 2nd IB Peace and Development Team.”
“There is a growing number of unresolved cases of human rights violations under the Aquino regime including the massacre of Prof. Leonardo Co and his companions in Kananga, Leyte in November 2010, the killing of Fr. Pops Tentorio in October 2011, the killing of Dutch missionary Willem Geertman last 3 July in Pampanga, and the massacre of the Mancera family in Camarines Norte last on 25 February 2012.”
“All these are being dismissed by Aquino himself as nothing but ‘Leftist propaganda’,” said the CPP, pointing out to his statements in a radio interview in New Zealand last October.
“The AFP and PNP both take pains to project to the public that it is serious in respecting human rights by launching trainings and writing manuals. However, all these are reduced to nought as they wage an antipeople war that aims to suppress the mass struggles and armed resistance of the oppressed and exploited classes,” added the CPP.