Member of Parliament Rep. Renato Magtubo

Partido ng Manggagawa [Labor Party-Philippines]

US ambassador to the Philippines Kenney’s statement that it respects human
rights and thus wants an end to political killings in the country is so much
double talk. The US has no moral ascendancy to talk of human rights when it
tortures and incarcerates without due process suspected terrorists in the
Abu Ghraib prison, and when Iraq remains under the military heel of its
illegal occupation.

This is the same with the Gloria Arroyo regime. It is all talk and no
action. The spate of statements about solving extrajudicial killings and all
these so-called concrete steps to ending political killings are good only
for public relations.

The people will believe it only when activists stop being assassinated and
killers are hauled into prison. Until then, Arroyo and Kenney’s brave
statements are mere propaganda made under duress of public and international
outrage.

We have been there and they have done that—in the case of Ka Popoy Lagman,
the working class leader who headed whose barinchlid was the Partido ng
Manggagawa. Six years after, the assassination remains unsolved. ###