Philippine-based and international human rights organizations and
fact-finding missions have gone to the scenes of the crimes of
extrajudicial killings and abductions of legal activists. They have
examined all available evidence and the testimonies of surviving victims
and other witnesses among the close relatives, neighbors, friends and
colleagues of the victims in the mass organizations, churches and
professional associations.

They have exerted due diligence to make their findings and conclusions.
They deserve all commendations for bringing to light the truth about the
extrajudicial killings and abductions perpetrated by the death squads of
the Arroyo regime. They are motivated by a high sense of justice and
respect for the human rights of the hundreds of victims, including
workers, peasants, women, youth, teachers, students, human rights
advocates, lawyers and judges, pastors and priests, journalists and
environmentalists

They have found it useless and even dangerous to depend on the scanty,
partial and misleading sham investigations done by the Philippine National
Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). However, they
have accorded due respect to the Commission on Human Rights for having
acted on complaints and for having held the government responsible for
failing to stop so many extrajudicial killings and abductions and allowing
these to proceed with impunity.

It has long been an “open secret” that no less than Gloria M. Arroyo is
in charge of the US-instigated scheme to use state terrorism to destroy
the revolutionary movement in the Philippines under the US policy of “war
on terror.” Phoenix Program veteran executive secretary Eduardo Ermita
and another US factotum national security adviser Norberto Gonzales have
long proclaimed that the legal activists are being killed because they are
allegedly communists and that anyway the communists could also be blamed
for carrying out “purges”.

Under her over-all direction, the cabinet oversight committee and the
anti-terrorism task force have planned and carried out Oplan Bantay Laya,
with one component using the military and police forces to assault the
armed revolutionary movement in suspected guerrilla fronts and the other
component using death squads to murder and abduct legal activists. Arroyo
also seeks to keep herself in power by weakening or destroying both the
legal opposition and the armed revolutionary movement.

Oplan Bantay Laya is patterned after the murderous Phoenix Program,
carried out by the US in its war of aggression against Vietnam in the
1960s. The national internal security plan of the Arroyo regime aims to
discredit the revolutionaries and their suspected supporters in every
possible way and then use death squads with unwritten orders to kill the
suspected supporters and blame the revolutionaries for the murder. It is
a dirty game being replayed by US agents and their assets in the
Philippines, like Arroyo, Eduardo Ermita and Norberto Gonzales.

Confronted by the findings and conclusions of the human rights
organizations and fact-finding missions, Gloria M. Arroyo makes pretenses
only this year at taking action on the widespread complaints against the
extrajudicial killings and abductions of legal activists. In May she
pretended to launch Task Force Usig. But this would preoccupy itself with
putting the blame on the revolutionaries, on the victims for supposedly
being associated with the revolutionaries and on their relatives for
refusing to be investigated.

In her state-of-the-nation address (SONA) in July, she pretended to
condemn the extrajudicial killings but gave high praise to the most
notorious butcher, General Palparan. Then she pretended to demand the
solution of 10 cases in ten weeks’ time. Before public derision for this
piece of tokenism could subside, more victims were shot dead by the death
squads. The psywar mills of the palace, the national security adviser,
the AFP and PNP spewed out the lie that the revolutionaries were engaged
in “purges”.

Hard pressed by the telling reports of human rights organizations,
especially Amnesty International, Gloria M. Arroyo has artfully announced
that she would form a commission to undertake the investigation of the
killings of journalists and legal activists. But such a commission is
actually intended to pull the rug from under the already existing
Commission on Human Rights. It can only depend on the sham investigations
of the police agents of Arroyo and can only end up with trying to uphold
the malicious claims of the regime against the victims, the legal
opposition and the revolutionary movement.

No solution to the extrajudicial killings and abductions can be expected
from the tyrant herself, the practitioner of state terrorism and
mastermind of the nationwide slaughter of legal activists. And no real
and honest investigation can be expected from the PNP, the AFP and the
department of justice because their preoccupation is to cover up and let
the death squads continue their dirty work, to put the blame on the
victims and the revolutionaries and to discredit the human rights
organizations and fact-finding missions that have exposed the truth.

Under the present circumstances, the people are looking for various ways
to obtain justice beyond the confines of the oppressive regime. The
current reign of terror and greed is generating popular resistance. The
time will certainly come for satisfying the people’s demand for justice
and punishing the criminals.